Science & Bias

What If It’s Not You?

The Lies, Labels, and Lazy Science Behind “Just Eat Less and Move More”  

We’ve all heard them.

• “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”

• “Calories in, calories out.”

• “It’s just a calorie deficit.”

• “Cut sugar.”

• “Work out for at least 30 minutes a day.”

These aren’t just health tips anymore. They’ve become mantras. Rules. Judgments. And for a lot of us?
They’ve also become failures we carry like shame.

Because when your body doesn’t shrink after doing “all the right things,” who do you blame?

If you follow the rules but don’t get the results, you start to believe you are the problem.
Lazy. Lacking willpower. Making excuses.

But what if it’s not that simple?
What if these one-size-fits-all “facts” were never designed to fit you?

The Science They Skip and the Bias They Don’t Admit

Science loves a good average. It studies groups, plots curves, and draws conclusions. But most of us don’t live in the land of averages.

You know what science doesn’t fully explain yet?

• Why one person can drop weight eating fast food, while another gains weight eating clean.

• Why some women snap back after baby #4, and others swell with inflammation after baby #1.

• Why my sister is tall, slender and after two babies, stayed the same size, and my body hasn’t felt like “mine” since giving birth to my one baby.

This isn’t about jealousy.
This is about biology. Hormones. Trauma. Genetics. Microbiomes. Medications. Sleep. Access. Stress. Disability. Environment. Even how much we’ve been believed by doctors and experts in the first place.

And here’s the other layer nobody really wants to talk about:
Most health advice wasn’t made with us brown and black people in mind.
Not with your body. Not with your background. Not with your reality.

A lot of these studies, “norms,” and metrics weren’t built on bodies that look like ours, like the BMI.  BMI is still used by doctors, insurance companies, and researchers.  Still shaping how we’re labeled “healthy” or “at risk,” and yet, the original BMI formula wasn’t even created for women, let alone women or people of color.  And since we’re here, it wasn’t even created for health, it was a statistical tool used to categorize whit European men for consensus data.

Yet, we’re still using it?! Are premiums are still based on it? My doctor’s assumptions are still shaped by it? My worth and wellness are still being evaluated and filtered through it? 

Here’s a Real Example of How this Showed Up as Recent as 2019! My sister is a licensed Doctor of Physical Therapy.  In or about 2019, she asked a basic, but necessary question during  her clinical training.  The professor was demonstrating how to check circulation (or something) by pressing on the nail bed of a hand.  He said, “you need to see how the pink turns white and then refills the nail bed.” My sister, being a person of color, raised her hand and asked, “What does this look like on a black or brown patient?”  He didn’t have an answer.  The silence said everything.

If the tools they use to see us doesn’t even see us, how can we trust the outcomes?

Blanket Statements

When a system fails to account for your body’s unique response, your story becomes collateral damage.
We’re not lazy. We’re layered.

Yet somehow, the blame always finds its way back to the individual.
You didn’t try hard enough.
You ate the wrong apple.
You didn’t cut the right sugar.
You missed a workout.

It’s exhausting. And worse it’s gaslighting.

So if you’ve ever looked at yourself in the mirror and wondered why the same plan that worked for someone else seems to be working against you or someone else’s drastic results are your minimal…

It’s not your discipline. It’s not your effort.
It might be the system. The science. The shortcut advice that wasn’t built for complexity.

You Deserve More Than a Slogan

You deserve health plans that honor your history.
Doctors that investigate, not just prescribe.
Spaces where swelling, stalling, and struggling are met with compassion not criticism.

Because maybe it’s not that we’re fighting ourselves.
Maybe we’ve just been fighting a system that doesn’t want to see us fully.

And that?
That’s not your failure.
That’s the world trying to label your experience as something small when it’s actually something deep, worthy, and deserving of better care.