Speak

Find Your Voice, Trust Your Gut, and Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be

Tunde Oyeneyin, To Be Confirmed Avid Reader Press

• Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781982195458
• eBook ISBN: 9781982195465
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

From Tunde Oyeneyin, the massively popular Peloton instructor, fitness star, and founder of SPEAK, comes an empowering, inspiring book about how she transformed grief, setbacks, and flaws into growth, self-confidence, and triumph—perfect for fans of Shonda Rhimes, Brene Brown, and Glennon Doyle.

On any given day, thousands of devoted people clip into their bikes and have their lives changed by Tunde Oyeneyin. From her platform in a Peloton studio, she encourages riders with her trademark blend of positivity, empathy, and motivational “Tunde-isms,” to push themselves to their limits both on and off the bike. Now, fans and readers everywhere can learn about her personal journey, and discover how they too can “live a life of purpose, on purpose” with Speak, a memoir-manifesto-guide to life inspired by her immensely popular Instagram Live series of the same name.

Taking us through each step of the SPEAK acronym—Surrender, Power, Empathy, Authenticity, and Knowledge—Oyeneyin shares the lessons she has learned about loss, love, body image, and how she has successfully created an intentional, joyful life for herself, offering an accessible blueprint for anyone looking to make a positive change in their lives.

Authenticity

ONE The Perfect Dress

I’m a fitness instructor at Peloton and a Nike athlete, two of the top platforms for a person with a strong, healthy body, so it might seem obvious for me to lead off with a story about body image, but it’s where we all begin. We all have a body. It’s the first thing that belongs to us. It’s where we live and how we move through the world, and our experience within it guides us into the different paths we take as we grow. When we transform it, it transforms us.

When I was fourteen years old, I was a bridesmaid in my auntie’s wedding. I’m first-generation American—my parents emigrated from Nigeria to Houston, Texas, before I was born—and in Nigerian families, we call all our elders “auntie” and “uncle.” It’s like having many parents. All my warm, chatty, Nigerian aunties talked to me as if I were their child, and my mother treated their children as if they were her own. We were often in each other’s houses for meals. Sometimes my cousins would come over to our house and stay for days.

Being a bridesmaid meant that I needed a new, fancy dress. I was so excited. My mom and I drove to a bridal store in the south part of Houston. My auntie was already there when we arrived.

“This is the dress!” she announced as we walked in. I looked at the store clerk, who was holding up a full-length, cobalt-blue satin dress with a boat neck, capped sleeves, and a pleated skirt. Oh. I was full-figured: I had bigger breasts, larger thighs, and was chubby-faced. I wasn’t particularly excited about wearing a dress with capped sleeves that would draw attention to my big arms. I had been picturing something that would make me look and feel like a princess. Blue was my favorite color, but in my opinion, it was wasted on this particular dress. The dress was an insult to cobalt. Maybe that’s too strong. It was just plain ugly. My auntie was a stylish woman, so I’d expected something a little more exciting, but it was her big day. I would do whatever made her happy.

“Can we see it in a size eighteen, please?” my mom asked the clerk.

The clerk glanced at me, and I saw a flash of doubt pass over her face, but then she smiled and said, “Of course. Let me check on that.” Instead of going to the rack, she went to her computer. After a moment, she returned and said, “I’m sorry to say that this dress doesn’t come in a size larger than twelve.”

I was mortified. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might be too big for the dress my auntie had picked.

The first time I felt self-conscious about my size was in third grade. My friends at school weren’t yet at the age where certain questions were considered too personal to ask, so a group of us were standing around in the schoolyard comparing our weights. I was the third to volunteer my weight, and I did so without hesitation: I was 116 pounds. The kids’ mouths dropped open. Brian looked at Rachel and said with awe, “Tunde’s in the hundreds!”

“Wow, that’s a lot!” exclaimed Rachel. Then they continued around the rest of the circle. None of my friends had hit triple digits yet. That hadn’t even occurred to me. My auntie had a younger daughter whom she always told, “You need to eat so you can be fat like your cousin Yetunde,” but it was more a practical statement than a judgmental one—she just wanted her daughter to have the benefit of my hand-me-downs. I had good clothes and always spent my allowance and birthday money on them. Every Saturday morning, my mother and I went to garage sales together looking for good deals. From the time I was little, I’d treated school as if it were a fashion show and arrived ready to fingerpaint in my Easter Sunday finest. As I got older I wore the cheap version of the trendiest styles.

I had three brothers—Tony and Tosin were older than me, and Tope was younger than me. They were all athletic and very big eaters. We lived off the ninety-nine-cent Whoppers at Burger King, or the McRib at McDonald’s when it was in season. A serving size for me was two burgers, and I never thought twice about it. We all ate whatever we wanted. Sometimes my brothers teased me, calling me fat, but my mom was pleased when we ate. Eating was a sign of health and a gesture of respect for the person who had prepared the food. When I complained about my brothers, my mother just said, “If they make fun of you, stand up straight and give it right back to them.” So when my brothers called me fat, I popped back at them, “At least I can lose weight. You can’t fix ugly.” But then, standing with the friends who were shocked that my weight had hit triple digits, there wasn’t a reason to snap back. Seeing the negative reaction, I decided on the spot that the next time anyone asked, I would lie about my weight, even though I knew that saying a lower number wouldn’t change my size.

Now, standing in the store, there was nowhere to hide, and no way to lie. Thankfully, my auntie didn’t miss a beat. “Okay, well, you don’t have to wear that dress,” she said. “Let’s find you something else.” When it came to her wedding, my auntie saw my size as nothing but a number, and the problem with the dress as nothing but an inventory issue. “Pick any dress in the store. I’ll pay for it.” Then she held up a dress. “What about this one?”

The hanger in her hand held a dress that was much prettier than the first: deep-blue lace with lots of detail, a bit of a train, and a beautiful silhouette. It put the bride in bridesmaid.

The salesclerk smiled. “Great choice. That’s one of the most beautiful dresses we have in the store, and we have it in your size.”

“I don’t want to wear that dress,” I said.

My mother nudged me hard, as if to say, Are you crazy? Your auntie’s going to pay for it, and it’s prettier. Take it! But I stubbornly repeated my position.

“I don’t want to wear that dress.” I carried the ugly size-twelve blue dress into the dressing room, determined to see if I could somehow squeeze into it. My mother followed me into the small room and sat on the bench off to the side, the size-eighteen lace dress draped over her arm.

I put the size-twelve dress on. It fit over my body, but there was no hope of zipping it up the back. Not gonna happen.

“Yetunde,” my mother said after a moment, “why don’t you just try on the prettier dress?”

“Mom, if I wear that dress, everyone’s going to know.”

“Know what? What is it that they’ll know?”

“They’ll know I was the fat one who couldn’t fit into the dress.” All at once, I sank into my mother’s arms, sobbing with my head in her lap.

One of the first things we learn as children is the danger of standing out. Of course, if you know you’re a beautiful singer, you might like the opportunity to perform in front of a group. And if you feel drop-dead gorgeous, you might be tempted to wear a bright-red dress to a wedding (although everyone knows you shouldn’t steal attention from the bride). When we don’t want to stand out, when we want to disappear or hide, it’s almost always because we don’t feel comfortable or proud of our authentic selves. And that fear—the fear that tells us to be invisible—holds us in place. As young girls we are conditioned to hate parts of ourselves. We spend hours, days, months, and collectively years agonizing over our bodies and the ideal image we wish we could achieve. I didn’t want my weight to stand out. I didn’t want my dress to stand out. I didn’t want to be different from everyone else. I had already experienced enough of that.

I thought about how, six months earlier, I had started high school. It felt like a big change—I was going to be a small fish in a big school. I was nervous, but excited—I’d be driving soon. Would I go to parties? Maybe I’d even have a boyfriend. My older brothers and cousins had gathered in the living room before dinner to figure out our back-to-school outfits and try on our new backpacks. My backpack was already full of all my schoolbooks. I tried it on, and my brothers made fun of me.

“Look at her backpack!”

“It’s riding high!”

“What’s wrong with my backpack?” I asked, looking around, confused. “It just has my schoolbooks in it.”

“That’s not how it goes in high school,” my cousin explained. “Your backpack can’t be that full. It’s gotta hang.”

“So what am I supposed to do, leave my books at home?”

“Do something. I don’t know. Carry some of them in your hands.” I reluctantly removed books one at a time until I had their approval.

Then my cousin said something that jolted me. “It’s a good thing you’re pretty. But they’re going to diss you for your weight. In junior high school it’s no big deal, but high school is a different playing field. You gotta get that under control.”

I knew he was trying to help me, to protect me, but his words sparked an insecurity that immediately took hold and kept growing.

Not long after school started, a teacher called me out for wearing a skirt that was too short. Our skirts were supposed to come down to our fingertips when we held our arms down against our sides. It was true that mine barely passed the finger test, but then the teacher who busted me for it pointed out another girl whose skirt was even shorter than mine: “Hers is shorter, but it looks appropriate on her.” Meaning: She is skinny and looks good in it, so she’s going to get away with breaking the dress code. But not you. You’re big, so you should hide your body in clothes.

As a result, I started trying to make my presence smaller, not just in my body but in my behavior, too. I didn’t laugh loudly, because then people would notice me and my body. I didn’t dance at parties—though I loved to dance—because then people would see me and how big I was. At school dances I told myself that I would dance only if someone asked. I was an extrovert trapped in an introvert’s body. I wanted to be part of everything—to dance, to move, to laugh, to goof around with friends—but I held back.

I think any of us would say to that teenager, “Don’t worry about it! Go! Dance! Have fun! Enjoy yourself!”—but saying it to young Tunde is easy. What do you say to yourself? Do you stand in your own way, interfere with your own joy and your own personality because you’re worried that you’ll stand out for the wrong reasons? Is it worth it? To hide our true selves because of a fear that’s in our heads?

In the dressing room, my mother held me, finally understanding some of what I had been holding beneath the surface. She took a beat, then said, “Yetunde, if this is something that’s important to you, you’re going to have to make a change.” That was my mother’s way. She had never judged my appearance. She had never commented on my weight. She had always told me I was beautiful. But when she saw how upset I was—that was what she wanted to change. And she made it clear that I had to be the one to do it. In the same moment that she acknowledged I had weight to lose, she empowered me to change. Without judgment or shame. Just love.

My mother was right. We have to be in the driver’s seat of our own lives. Whatever it is that makes you want to hide, you have two choices—learn to love it or change it. We can’t let fear steer our course. We left the store empty-handed, but a week later, my mom presented me with a new dress. “Try this!” she said. Looking closer, I realized it was the hideous cobalt-blue bridesmaid dress—and it appeared to be in my size.

“How did you get this? I thought they didn’t have my size,” I asked.

“I bought two and sewed them together,” my mother replied.

I slid the dress on. It fit perfectly. I looked in the mirror and smiled. I was going to look exactly as ugly as everyone else.

At the wedding, I fit in perfectly, feeling the comfortable anonymity of being lost in the crowd. In true African-wedding style, there was no shortage of food or dancing. In fact, most people missed the ceremony and showed up at two a.m. for the dancing. Instead of bringing gifts, it’s an African tradition to bring money—preferably in ones—so that you can spray money at the newlyweds. All the little kids crawled around on the floor collecting money and grabbing more as it dropped from the sky. I was too old now to help pick up the money but had graduated to begging my parents for ten dollars in ones so that I could be one of the people to spray money.

After the wedding was over, and all that was left were photos, where my dress blended perfectly into a sea of cobalt, I took my mother’s words to heart. If I was unhappy, I had to make a change. I told myself I had to stop eating Whoppers and start working out. My job, working at Fuzzy’s Pizza, was next door to a 24 Hour Fitness. When summer rolled around, I bought a membership. It came with a free orientation session with one of the trainers, but I was too embarrassed to be seen trying to learn my way around. I still didn’t want to acknowledge to the world that there was anything about myself I wanted to change. I didn’t want to admit that I wasn’t confident, that I cared about how I looked.

The gym had two sides—one area with cardio machines and another with weight machines and free weights. The weights area was intimidating. Nobody had taught us weightlifting in school, and it felt like people might watch and judge if I tried to learn here. The cardio machines were easier to figure out without anyone’s help, and the people on the ellipticals, treadmills, and bikes were zoned out, listening to music or watching the TVs that were mounted on the wall. That worked for me. We could each be in our own private universes.

All summer, I walked to the gym, worked out on the cardio machines, went to work, then walked home. Without any plan or guidance, I started to eat better, avoiding fast food and sodas. I lost thirty pounds.

That fall, I walked into tenth grade not knowing whether my achievement would be obvious. On the third day of school, I was in the PE room for dance class. The bell hadn’t gone off yet, and we hadn’t changed into our gym clothes. I always liked to dress up for school, and unfortunately back then it was hard to find stores with plus-sized clothing. Now that I’d lost weight, I could finally fit into the outfits I’d always wanted to wear. My favorite store was called Clothestime. It was the Forever 21 of its time, and I was thrilled that at last I could shop there. That day I was wearing a skintight patterned yellow-and-eggplant off-the-shoulder top with a high-waisted pencil skirt that had a slit up the side and tan wedges. I felt great. I walked across the gym to say hi to the coach. Everyone could see me, and I was strutting my stuff.

Then, the unthinkable happened. Becky Myers waved me over. Becky Myers! She was one of the perpetually pretty, popular girls in our class, and she was acknowledging my existence. I walked over to her and her ever-present circle of friends. “You look so good,” she told me. “You lost so much weight. How did you do it?”

I wasn’t unpopular or uncool—I had plenty of friends in all different groups—the band kids, the stoners, and the popular kids. But I still was not showing up fully as myself. My parents were fighting to make their mortgage in a middle-class neighborhood. I went to a big school where football was everything. (It was Texas, y’all.) I felt singled out enough as one of the only Black kids in my class, and on top of that I didn’t have the designer things the rich (and often most popular) kids had. My classmates were wealthy kids who wore the hottest trends, and I bought my knock-off Doc Martens at Payless, where my mom waited for the BOGO sales. Becky was the It Girl. I couldn’t believe that someone who I thought had everything wanted to know how I did something. She wanted something I had! Did she have confidence issues, too? It immediately humanized her. “I’ve been eating healthy and working out,” I replied.

As I unveiled the new, trimmer Tunde, I continued to get praise from students, parents, and teachers for how I looked. Kids seemed to like me more. I had more friends. I had expected losing weight would improve my life, and it did. Society had showed me that looking a certain way meant I was invited into places.

Before long, I realized that it wasn’t the weight itself that had made me hide. Anyone can dance. Anyone can laugh. Anyone can wear a dress that doesn’t match. I had allowed my insecurity to imprison me, and even the validation of others couldn’t have changed it. What if people didn’t start to like me because I was skinny? What if they liked me because I finally showed them who I really was? I had to free myself by being comfortable with who I was.

I felt a new sense of freedom and felt that the world was leaning toward me because I was finally showing up as myself. I allowed people to see the full me...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Chapter One: The Perfect Dress: Authenticity
• Chapter Two: A Life of Purpose: Empathy
• Chapter Three: Left Foot, Right Foot: Power
• Chapter Four: The Blue Light: Surrender
• Chapter Five: A Starting Point: Power
• Chapter Six: Second Chances: Authenticity
• Chapter Seven: A New York Moment: Knowledge
• Chapter Eight: The Mirror: Empathy
• Chapter Nine: Speak Up: Authenticity
• Chapter Ten: The Chop: Power
• Chapter Eleven: Always There: Knowledge
• Chapter Twelve: Life Cycles: Surrender
• Afterword
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright