WELCOME TO UNAPOLOGETICALLY THICK AND FIT
Hiiiiii Queens! My name is Daysha (but most of y’all know that)... and I just wanted to take a moment to welcome you to my new blog, Unapologetically Thick and Fit!
This will be my online sanctuary devoted to covering all things health/fitness/wellness, as well as keeping you updated on my Fitness Genes Journey.
Just to introduce myself to people who don't know me, I am a writer/director/producer, poet, and social media influencer.
I am mainly recognized for the work I did on Buzzfeed, but I was killing it before I started there too! Prior to BF, I was winning awards for a play I wrote my senior year in college about 2 black twin sisters exploring their identity…
And promoting my senior thesis film, which dealt with setting out to answer this age-old question; is blackness more than skin deep? And if so, what is it? I may have snagged a few awards for this one too.
A lot of my creative work centers around the black community, and the black experience in America because well… I’m black, and we’re a pretty dope community. I also recognize that I’m biased buuuut whatever.
But I’ve also done a lot of creative work around other communities and identities that I’m super proud of as well.
All in all, I just love people (depending on the day cuz let’s be real). It’s one of the reasons why I minored in psychology while I was in college (it was supposed to be a dual major with media studies, but they tried to hit me with a clinical study thesis, and I said y’all can miss me with that one. So sadly I had to drop it to a minor, but know that it has always been a major in my heart.)
Anyway (I’m very tangential y’all, so be prepared for A LOT of parentheses), but yes back to the point... I love people, and I actually picked up media studies my sophomore year in college because I was so intrigued by the impact that media (video in particular) could have on people. So, naturally, I ended up at Buzzfeed straight out of college, and worked there for 3.5 years. That pretty much made me ancient in BF years.
But at the end of 2017, I decided that I wanted to do something new, and take a chance on being my own boss. I also wanted to hone in more on the work I was doing at BuzzFeed around female re-affirmations of "powher".
If you are a Day 1 fan of mine, you already know how much of a struggle managing my weight has been throughout my life. While I will get more detailed about what my journey has been like in future posts, I have pretty much been through every type of diet plan, done more fitness trends then I can count, and have had almost every kind of negative thought one can have towards their body.
While at BF, I always volunteered for fitness videos, and exceeded the expectation of what was required for the program. Yet still, I always saw very minimal results.
The last time I really started losing weight was back when I was seeing a personal trainer, but IHATED personal training. He was a great guy, and I got the physical results that I wanted. But I soon started to notice that I never really felt good about myself afterwards. Like it was nice to be able to fit into all the “cute” clothes, but I still didn't have a great mental relationship with my body... which is probably why I ended up gaining back the weight a year later.
I’ve also always had a horrible relationship with food throughout my life. Between developing disordered eating habits, and sifting through all of the "fake" healthy eating tips and diets, it's like I didn't even stand a chance at having a good relationship with food. And the fucked up thing is that I feel like even when you do go out of your way to eat something that says in big, bright lettering that it’s "healthy", you end up learning in a health doc that its actually unhealthier than the regular version of the same product. Like FDA... What's good, fam? What's with all these misleading labels?
I have lost, and gained, and lost, and then ballooned way too many times my life, and honestly, at the beginning of 2016, I was starting to come to the conclusion that my body was broken. I was starting to believe that it didn’t matter how hard I tried, I was just going to be fat for the rest of my life (unless I wanted to go back to starving myself, and believe me, it was definitely an option I would occasionally put back on the table from time to time. Future blog post to come about that time in my life soon).
But somewhere along the way as I was deciding to try and lose weight again (I’ll have to really try and pinpoint what did it in a future post), I told myself that this time was going to be different. This time I was going to put being healthy first. And by "healthy", I don't mean just losing weight, but also learning how to feel good in my body, and love every part about who I was. I wanted to start thinking about how does one become healthy in their mind, body, and soul.
I think during the other parts of my life, my motivation for weight loss stemmed from wanting a boy to like me, or wanting to be some arbitrary size in jeans. But this time around, I just really wanted to be in love with what I saw when I looked in the mirror. I wanted to be able to look at myself, and say that you are enough, regardless of whatever size you are at. Who knew it could be so revolutionary (and difficult) to just love yourself?
So for all of 2016, I set out to do videos that really challenged myself to change my perception of my body. I started off the year doing boudoir for the first time.
Then, a few months later I got the chance to walk in my first runway show! In my underwear at that. And I can’t lie, I fucking lit that shit up! (I also literally tore my cornea the day before and had to wear an eye patch leading up to the actual event so #icametowin).
I think the real breakthrough came when I worked on the best leggings for thick girls video. I was probably like 190-something pounds when filming that video, and I had never been so in love with my body. It was the first time since learning that I had gained all that weight at the beginning of 2016 that I felt like it was actually possible to love my body at any size.
So when I finally "conquered" the ability of being able to have unconditional love for myself (I put conquer in quotes because we all have our days), I decided that I was truly ready to give losing weight another chance. And at the time, my amazing friend, Sky, just so happened to be producing a video about DNA fitness.
When I did this video, I finally realized how tired I was of having my weight loss journeys be about becoming skinny. Not only am I never going to be a size 2 (and am totally fine with that), but after developing and using the 4 Queen Commandments, I realized that being a size 2 isn’t even really what I wanted. My true desire has always been to just feel amazing about myself, but because of the harmful weight loss media that women are always being subjected to, I always believed that being skinny was the only way I'd ever be able to do that.
But after I took some time to have some much needed clarity with myself, I finally realized that it is totally possible to be thick, fit, healthy, and happy, and if there was one thing I was gonna have people take away from this video, it was definitely going to be that. #THICKGIRLNATION where y'all at?!
We don't really have a health community for women that is devoted to helping people discover what healthy looks like for them. Everyone tries to act like they know what "healthy" is supposed to look like, and I developed Yes Queen, and specifically Unapologetically Thick and Fit to challenge those views. Healthy is not one size fits all, and I hope that when you discover what health looks like for you, you feel confident in telling all those "health" trolls to shove it.
Since filming the Fitness Genes video, I have lost around 20 lbs. But honestly, this is the first time in my life where that number doesn't really mean much of anything to me. What I love most about having done Fitness Genes is that I have an unbelievable amount of confidence inmy body. It has given me the ability to understand how unique my body is, and all the best ways to accomplish whatever fitness goals I have based on that uniqueness. It gave me the power of clarity, and if you know a thing or two about the 4 Queen Commandments, you'll know that it is with this clarity on how my body works that I have been to finally embrace being unapologetically thick and fit!
So I hope you'll subscribe, and I'll keep you up-to-date on all of my fitness goals, as well as developing original recipes, and content around my perspective on health/fitness/wellness. #THICKGIRLNATION, this is our year, y'all! Les get it!