Get Off the Diversity Diet Hamster Wheel

January 5, 2021

We made it to 2021 folks! With the new year comes new goals and intentions. One of the number one goals that people set is to lose weight. In January, gyms typically see a spike new members and a massive drop off within six month. As we enter a new year, still wrestling with a global pandemic and the waning attention to diversity and inclusion that peaked following the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and so many who haven’t received national attention, I challenge you to not let your focus on DEI go the way of neglected gym memberships and failed diets. There are so many ways that dieting and DEI efforts are similar and unfortunately, those similarities are often what cause both to fail.

Six weeks following a planned foot surgery, I stepped on the scale for the first time. For six weeks, I could do little more than make it from my bed to the couch and some days I didn’t even bother doing that. So, I was not cooking and definitely was not exercising. I didn’t have to get on the scale to know I was the heaviest I had ever been. A simple glance in the mirror or failed attempt at putting on skinny jeans could have been proof enough. But that first glimpse at the scale made it abundantly clear that something had to change. Even after getting the clearance from my doctor to exercise again, I was far from ready to return to teaching Zumba or any other intense workout. Months went by and I kept saying, “I know I need to lose this weight. I know this is what is making me feel tired and sick.” But that was it - I was all talk and no action. I could see that there was a problem, but I had no real plan to fix it.

I’d lost weight before as a short-term fix, like when I wanted to look a certain way in my wedding dress or before traveling home and inevitably seeing that family member who loves to tell me how “full” my face is looking. I could hit the gym multiple days a week and get on some crazy fad diet, but hours of cardio and only eating chicken broth was never a real, sustainable plan. Sure, I may have got the outside to look good for a brief period while I posed for photos, but I’d be right back where I started in no time flat. I had only found a surface level, temporary solution.

So this time, I decided I needed to bring in a professional if I wanted to end this cycle. My husband told me about a nutritionist one of his colleagues worked with to lose a lot of weight and get healthy. We decided that working with the nutritionist could only help.

When I arrived at the nutritionist’s office for the first time he didn’t immediately put me on the scale. He started by asking about all the things that can influence weight, like my medical history, lifestyle, and how I handled my emotions. After what felt a bit like a therapy session, he put me on a machine that not only told my weight, but also my fat-to-muscle ratio, my lean body mass, segmented fat by each arm and leg, and even the amount of fat surrounding my internal organs in the abdomen. He then gave me a list of things that I needed to get checked out through blood tests: cholesterol, thyroids, iron, blood count, etc. In my mind I just kept thinking “Doc, can’t you just tell me how to lose this weight so I can hurry up and do that, because going to get blood work is uncomfortable and really seems a bit like overkill!” He sent me on my way and told me to come back after the blood work was complete.

I finally got the required tests and returned to the nutritionist’s office. He had now collected enough data to understand what all needed to be fixed. My husband went through this same process and while weight loss was the big-picture goal for both of us, he discovered he was pre-diabetic and needed to get his cholesterol under control. By working with the nutritionist, we uncovered more than just the problem on the surface and developed individualized strategies and goals we needed to meet in order to truly solve those problems. Although we started with some drastic dietary changes to kickstart the process, we focused on nutrition and creating healthy habits that we could sustain. We educated ourselves about the foods we ate so that we could make better choices. We supported one another when it seemed hard or we were distracted by conflicting priorities. And we met with our nutritionist on a regular basis to assess our progress.

If we had tried to solve our weight problem alone, we'd have been frustrated by hours in the gym with little progress and no accountability. Because we had data, we had clarity on the problem, clearly defined goals, timelines, and regular assessments of our progress. It didn’t make the journey painless, but it made it much easier to stay on track in order to meet those goals. And after the goals were met (yay for my husband coming off of cholesterol meds and for us both having more energy, better skin, and of course smaller waistlines), we continued to be accountable and created solutions for maintaining that progress.

DEI efforts that are short-sighted, event based, or only prioritized when your company is called out with PR crisis that highlights your problem are only a temporary solutions, much like trying to fit into a wedding dress or preparing to see that family member who tells everyone about your “full face." They may make the outside look good enough for a diversity website, but they don’t fix the unhealthy company culture that is the actual root issue. Fad diets (performative allyship) or quick fixes (simply hiring more people from diverse backgrounds) won’t provide a sustainable, long-term solution to your diversity problem. Meaningful progress includes:

- taking a deep dive into your data (qualitative and quantitative) in order to uncover the systemic and specific issues for your organization

- being intentional in finding the right solutions (what works for one department or company may not work for another)

-being accountable (regularly reviewing the data)

- and working to maintain an equitable and inclusive cultural

Without fully assessing the data, making systemic changes, and committing long-term, you’ll forever be on the diversity diet hamster wheel.