My name is Ada. I am a regular woman from Lagos. I am not a doctor. I am not a nutritionist. I am not a fitness coach. I am someone who spent years inside a body that would not respond — no matter what I tried.
Not because I was not trying. Because nobody had ever shown me the actual reason why the body holds onto weight. And without that, every single thing I tried was just guessing.
I was the woman at the party wearing the jacket over everything. The one pulling the dress down. Smiling while calculating whether to stand near the door so nobody saw me from behind.
I had a man. A good man. But I knew. The way his friends looked at me. The way conversations changed when a slimmer woman walked in. You cannot miss it when it is happening to you.
How I Started
I overheard a phone call one night. He thought I was asleep.
He told his friend, "I don't know o. I just want someone who takes care of herself."
I lay there and did not move. Did not cry. Just lay there in the dark thinking the same thing over and over:
I am trying. I have been trying for years. Why is nothing working?
The Advice I Never Forgot
I called my aunt the next morning. She listened without interrupting.
Then she said something I still think about:
"Ada, the problem is not that you are not trying. The problem is that nobody has ever shown you the one thing your own body has been hiding from you this whole time."
— Ada's aunt, after that morning callShe would not explain further. Just said I would understand soon.
So I kept trying things. Anything. Everything.
Everything I Tried That Did Not Work
I felt dizzy by 2pm and binged by evening every single time. It always backfired.
Lost water weight. It came back in four days. Plus stomach pain I will not describe here.
I felt judged the moment I walked in. Used it twice. Never went back.
Lasted nine days. Then ate a full plate in one sitting out of pure frustration.
Her body was not my body. It did nothing for me except make me feel like a failure.
Different ones every week, no structure, no progress I could measure. Quit every one within days.
The Conversation That Changed Everything
Three weeks after that phone call, I was at my cousin's wedding in Lekki. I almost did not go. I sat next to an older woman I did not know well. A family friend, retired now. She used to be a doctor.
She noticed I was not eating much off the buffet. She asked why. I told her, half joking, that I was "trying to be good."
She looked at me and said, "Trying to be good how? Do you even know your own body's number?"
I did not.
"There is one thing about your own body you have never been shown. Something most people go their whole lives never being told, because nobody profits from telling you something this simple. Once you see it, you will wonder why nobody ever pointed it out before."
— The retired doctor, LekkiShe wrote a few things down on a napkin. Folded it. Told me to try it for two weeks before I made up my mind either way.
I almost did not bother opening it that night.
Nothing At First. Then Everything Changed.
The first few days, nothing felt different. By day five I almost gave up. This is just another thing that won't work.
I reached for my work trousers. They slid on without the usual fight at the waist.
I stood in front of the mirror for almost a full minute. Same trousers. Same size. But they fit differently.
"Ada... wait. Have you lost weight? Your face is different." — my sister, five weeks later
She said, "That's it? That's all you did?" I told her yes. That's all.
Two other women the doctor had spoken to at that wedding told me the same thing weeks later. One of them said the change came as a quiet bonus she had not even expected. Another said he finally stopped feeling like food was the enemy once he understood the same thing.
Three of us. Same quiet little secret. Three different bodies, slowly changing in the background of normal, busy lives.
The DMs started coming. Then more. Then I was spending hours every day just explaining the same thing over and over. So I stopped. And I wrote it all down instead.
