African-American Women: Take Note

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taking charge

To avoid the health problems that afflicted her mother, Dr. Ro decided to arm herself with knowledge. She earned a Ph.D. in nutrition, with the goal of making an impact on the unhealthy eating habits and lifestyles of her African-American sisters. Yet she struggled to get her own weight under control, stuck in a yo-yo diet pattern of losing weight and then gaining it back. “I kept losing the same 30 pounds over and over again,” she says.

Finally she decided that as a nutrition expert, she needed to set a better example. She did not want to be an overweight TV nutritionist. “Here I was doling out advice on nutrition and not living by it myself,” Dr. Ro says. “I finally got serious about losing weight because I wanted to live a higher quality of life.”

So she took control of her health and her weight (she’s now a buff size 4). She has also focused her efforts on helping other African-American women reduce their weight-related health risks. Obesity leads to many of the health problems that plague black women today, including high blood pressure, heart disease, breast cancer, diabetes, cervical cancer, and stroke, Dr. Ro says. “An alarming number of African-American women are overweight,” she says.