What does the phrase "keepin it real" mean?

I don’t know how it applies to a weight loss commercial, other than it means, to me, being authentic, no mind games, BS. deceptions. Just keep it real, as in honest and sincere in who you are and how you show up.

Maybe it’s use in this commercial is intended to mean staying honest, with yourself. No sneaking cookies, keep it real. lol

In that commercial, it refers to “real results”. I think they just used the phrase “keepin’ it real, because that’s how they talk in the Jersey Shore.

It means no more excuses!

When people say “I’m keeping it real” what they’re often really saying is “I like to behave without respect for anyone but myself and I refuse to be blamed for it.”

When Ronnie from the Jersey Shore says it, what he really means is “I am keeping it real because I don’t have the nuanced intelligence required to understand the irony of my own celebrity.”

@iamthemob lol4rl I lurve that answer!

I once asked our kids’ favorite babysitter, who is African-American, what the term meant. She is from a middle class background. She said that for her, it meant not forgetting that she is black. It meant holding onto some connections to the ‘hood. Perhaps the way she talked.

Perhaps on a deeper level, it was a kind of acknowledgement that as they rise in terms of wealth, they become more “white” and move farther from where the rest of their people are. So they have to keep it real. They have to talk black when in an all black crowd, while they talk white, when in a mixed crowd.

I was somewhat shocked when she told me this. What bothers me most is the idea that poorer blacks will accuse wealthier blacks of somehow betraying the race. I don’t see how any black person in the US could forget where they came from. That money has come to mean whiteness to some degree is just…. disturbing.

But yeah. She keeps it real by going back and hanging with people she knows from high school, many of whom grew up in the hood.

I don’t know about any of these other meanings. I had the impression that the term started as I have described it. Probably it’s other appropriating the culture of the have-nots, as the mainstream culture seems to do over and over and over.

I thought it meant true to yourself, honest. So I would have thought in weight loss, it would mean no cheating.