Brenda Song, known for her roles in Disney's "The Suite Life of Zach and Cody" and Hulu's "Dollface," has publicly shared her experiences with weight loss, family, and finding balance in her life. This article explores her journey, weaving together personal anecdotes, career milestones, and advocacy for cancer awareness.
Early Life and Career
At 16, Brenda Song was living what seemed like a dream. She starred in the hit show "The Suite Life of Zach and Cody" and felt like everything was going perfectly. "I’m like, ‘I got my dream job … I’m learning how to drive. Nothing bad will ever happen to anyone in my life!’" she told SurvivorNet. However, this sense of invincibility was shattered when her mother, Mai Lee Song, was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Family Matters
Song says her mom, who is now in treatment for her fourth breast cancer recurrence, is not only her “best friend,” she’s “the most upbeat and happy person ever.” When her mom shared the news of her breast cancer diagnosis with Song and her two younger brothers, Nathan and Tim, then 14 and 9, respectively, Song says she realized that “cancer is the scariest six letter word in the dictionary. To me, it equaled death.”
During her mother's treatment, Song balanced her acting career with her family responsibilities. She appeared in various Disney Channel series and movies, including "Wendy Wu Homecoming Warrior" and "Stuck in the Suburbs." "It was really hard, seeing my mom so sick, and knowing there were times when I couldn’t physically be there with her. But my mom never once made me feel bad [about it]," she said. Despite her busy schedule, Song made it a point to be by her mother's side during appointments, treatments, and recoveries. "After one of her major surgeries, we just lay there in her bed and watched season after season of ‘Criminal Minds,'" Song recalls.
She also struggled with guilt for not always being physically present due to her work. "I felt waves of guilt for not being able to be there physically for truly every minute because I was working," Song says. However, she learned to find balance by prioritizing the quality of her time with her mom, even when she couldn't be there physically. She would iMessage and FaceTime her during her chemo sessions.
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Coping Mechanisms
Song's family coped with her mother's illness by staying positive and finding humor in tough moments. "I remember when my mom first started losing her hair, she would joke with my little brothers that she was like the Grim Reaper," Song says. When her mom cut her hair off, she involved the whole family, letting her younger brothers shave her head over the bathtub.
Her mom’s illness brought them even closer. “It is such an emotional and physically taxing thing, but the truth is, it just brought my family so close together,” Song says. “To have to address the fear of losing your mom… of death… at such a young age… it just made my brothers and I so close.”
In an effort to support her mother's health, Song adopted a plant-based diet after learning that her cancer was hormone-receptor-positive. “We became vegans together, and totally changed our lifestyles,” Song says. Last year, in an effort to help her cancer journey, Song and her boyfriend gave her mom a cat. “My boyfriend was like, ‘I want to get your mom a cat so she can always have a partner to go with her to chemo,” Song says. “And he did.” Song’s mom named the cat “Sparky J” - a reference to the influencer and organizational guru Marie Kondo’s philosophy-turned-tagline, “Spark Joy.” “My mom and I were Marie Kondo-ing our lives, and the cat sparked joy,” Song says.
Cancer Advocacy
Song's personal experiences have fueled her advocacy for cancer awareness. She works with Stand Up to Cancer, providing a platform for discussing cancer prevention and treatment. Song emphasizes the importance of information, especially for younger audiences facing similar situations. "Not knowing all the details and information and risks about cancer was scarier than knowing," she says.
Inspired by her mother's oncologist, who took the time to educate her about cancer, Song became a proponent of the phrase "information is power." This belief led her to undergo genetic testing to assess her own risk for breast cancer. Fortunately, she tested negative for the genetic variants most commonly linked to increased breast cancer risk.
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Song encourages others to listen to their bodies and seek information. "If you have an instinct, it’s better to be safe than sorry," she advises. "Cancer is something that can make you feel helpless because you lack control, but taking a [genetic test] gave us a little bit of control back."
Weight Loss Journey
Weight loss is a multifaceted journey that incorporates physical and mental well-being. Brenda Lomeli, a weight-loss coach, highlights the emotional and spiritual components of weight loss. She stresses the importance of self-love and body positivity, arguing that weight loss is more than simply achieving a certain appearance.
Lomeli's method focuses on building a healthy relationship with oneself and with food. She emphasizes that lasting weight loss necessitates dealing with underlying emotional and psychological issues. Lomeli's tattoo of the word "love" on her foot represents her dedication to self-love and acceptance throughout her weight-loss journey.
Lomeli advocates for a comprehensive approach to weight loss that includes nutrition, brain science, and body science. She empowers her clients to become authorities over their own bodies and make informed decisions about their health. Lomeli emphasizes the importance of understanding how different foods affect the body and making conscious choices based on that knowledge.
Overcoming Deprivation
One of the biggest barriers to successful weight loss is the sensation of deprivation. Lomeli tackles this issue by reintroducing choice into every aspect of the process. She encourages clients to reframe their thinking from "I can't have that" to recognizing the neutrality and choice in every food decision.
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Lomeli encourages her clients to regard food choices as decisions rather than rules. She draws parallels to other areas of life in which people make deliberate decisions without feeling deprived. By applying the same neutral approach to food, people can overcome feelings of deprivation and make more conscious choices.
Brooke Castillo, founder of The Life Coach School, shares her experience of overcoming drinking by changing her mindset. Instead of telling herself she couldn't have alcohol, she began to say she preferred not to. This subtle shift in language changed her neurology and empowered her to make healthier choices.
Both Lomeli and Castillo emphasize the importance of self-empowerment in making long-term, sustainable changes. They encourage people to own their decisions and recognize that they have the power to choose what they want in their lives.
Redefining Reasons for Weight Loss
Lomeli and Castillo challenge the traditional reasons for wanting to lose weight. They push people to examine their motivations and ensure that they are not rooted in self-hatred or the desire to meet external standards.
Castillo poses the question "Why?" to clients who express a desire to lose weight. She argues that reasons such as "I'm unacceptable otherwise" or "I'm ugly" are likely to lead to suffering throughout the process. Instead, she encourages people to focus on positive, self-affirming reasons for wanting to improve their health.
Lomeli emphasizes the importance of deconditioning diet thinking and challenging the judgmental messages that society often sends about weight and body image. She helps her clients pry those messages out of their brains and replace them with more positive, self-accepting thoughts.
Body Confidence
Lomeli emphasizes the importance of body confidence regardless of weight. She believes that unapologetic body confidence originates in the mind rather than in external factors. Lomeli's personal story exemplifies this attitude. She recalls a period in her life when she felt ashamed of her body and wore large jackets even in hot weather to avoid being seen. She now wants to be an example of how people can go from feeling that way about their bodies to feeling good about themselves.
Lomeli tells a story about attending a Halloween party dressed as Catwoman while being 25 pounds heavier than she is now. Despite her weight, she had the realization that her emotions were not determined by her weight. This realization marked a turning point in her journey toward self-acceptance and body confidence.
Castillo emphasizes the pleasure of inhabiting one's own body and experiencing what it means to embody one's female form. She believes that self-hatred prevents people from fully enjoying life and experiencing pleasure. Castillo lauds Lomeli for demonstrating what it means to be inside one's body in all of her photos, highlighting the importance of internal acceptance over external appearance.