The San Francisco-based communications director says she never used to taste her food. She ate mainly to feed an addiction.
"I ate a lot of junk, and I wasn't mindful about what I ate," Monifa said.
But unlike with drugs or
alcohol, where an addict can stop the behavior that they are addicted
to, she knew she couldn't stop eating. So she decided instead to stop
eating and drinking out of habit.
She started with small changes.
She gave up diet soda first. For her it was a real sacrifice.
"I would drink maybe six
to eight Diet Cokes a day. I know people think it's OK to drink since it
doesn't have calories, but I realized I never really had it on its
own," Monifa said. "I was usually rinsing down a big bag of chips with
it."
So she gave up chips.
After that she stopped
eating the M&Ms, their bright colors always taunting her from the
bowl at a woman's desk outside her office door.
The tipping point
At her heaviest, Monifa
weighed over 400 pounds. She says there was no one moment when she
realized she needed to lose weight. The knowledge came in small waves.
Her daughter complained she walked too slow.
She couldn't join her friends on rides at the amusement park because she exceeded the weight limits.
When she flew she had to
use a seatbelt extender and actually got bumped once from a flight.
When she got off the plane the gate agent told her he would put it in
her profile that she had to buy two seats.
Monifa, 57, doesn't know
exactly how she put on the weight. She just knows she gained about 10
to 15 pounds a year after the age of 15.
"I don't know at what point I remember thinking, 'Woops, I'm over 200 pounds now,'" Monifa said.
Subconsciously, she may have been avoiding situations where she'd have to confront it.
"I then started telling
myself things like, 'I'll never weigh more than 200 pounds. Then it
became I'll never weigh more than 250, then 300, then 350. Then it
became 400," Monifa said.
Her mother, and then her
partner, bought her clothes. She stopped weighing herself when she got
to 389 pounds. She later realized she had even stopped looking in the
mirror.
"There was a window on a
department store, and I remember seeing someone out of the corner of my
eye and thinking 'Who is that big fat person behind me?' It slowly
dawned on me. That was me."
The surgery
She decided she had to
do something drastic. She looked into gastric bypass; a friend had lost
110 pounds with the surgery. With gastric bypass, doctors create a small
pouch at the top of your stomach and bypass the rest to send food
straight to the small intestine. The walnut-sized pouch can only hold about an ounce of food.
"Right when I was
thinking about it, I got a call from a friend who said that woman had
passed," Monifa said. "I put the surgery off. I wasn't losing my life
over it."
Three year ago, she worked up the nerve to look into it again.
Her insurance covered a
program at Stanford. It started on the right note with a lecture from
the physician who would do her surgery.
"He said he did 2,000
surgeries and had no fatalities and he grew up in Huntsville, Alabama,
which is where I once lived," Monifa said. "I took that as a sign that
it was going to be OK."
In August 2012, she had surgery. She weighed 330 pounds.
The first two weeks
weren't bad. She didn't mind the liquid, high-protein diet. She soon
graduated to eating small quantities. But then she slipped into an old
habit.
She was running late on the way to the gym. She stopped at a drive-thru. After one bite she threw up.
That's when she gave up fast food for good.
By the time she went
back to work in October she was down to 280 pounds. "None of the clothes
I had fit, so I posted that on Facebook and people started giving me
clothes in vast quantities. People were so incredibly supportive."
They were also confused.
"It's funny, when people
hear that you have had gastric bypass, it's almost like they think
you've had liposuction and had the fat removed, but that's not the
case," Monifa said. "A lot of what helps you lose weight afterward are
all the changes you have to make."
She eats five or six
small meals a day and takes advantage of San Francisco's reputation as
an inventive mecca for foodies. She now enjoys fresh vegetables from the
farmer's market or a new take on a classic Asian dish. She'll eat
anything baked, broiled or grilled. She eats slowly to enjoy the taste
and the smell and the quality. And if she does get a craving, she'll eat
a tiny amount of something rather than the entire container.
"I bought a quart of vanilla ice cream when I moved into my place a year ago, and it is still there," Monifa said.
Group therapy helped.
Setting exercise goals did, too. Her step counter reminds her to get at
least 10,000 steps each day. And she didn't just join one gym, she
joined two. A 24-hour facility by her house in Oakland and a gym right
down the street from work in San Francisco.
"Since that one is a lot
of money, it motivates me to go every day," Monifa said. "And it feels
like a treat. It's that fancy. I feel like a woman of luxury on the
scene."
Socializing now is about
activity, rather than food. She takes walks with friends and plays
basketball with her son. She plays tennis and swims.
When she does dine out
she looks at the menu online and decides what healthy option to have
ahead of time so she's not tempted. She cuts her meal into a smaller
portion and takes the leftovers home.
The true transformation
The 5-foot-11-inch woman is down to 179 pounds. Her goal used to be 190.
"I feel good, and I feel healthy," Monifa said.
Her sleep apnea equipment and high blood pressure medicine are gone. Her lower back and joint pain disappeared.
And she takes the time
to celebrate what she calls the NSVs: the little non-scale victories.
Signing up for a charity walk, she relished when the staff insisted she
take a medium T-shirt rather than her request for "the largest size you
have." She tucks in her shirt now, showing off her waist.
She has even started to date. And finally, after all these years, she looks in the mirror.
"I've never felt good
about myself, about my looks. Now I feel like I could attract someone.
My friend from college jokes that it is time I should be in a lesbian
power couple, but really now I just want someone who can hold their own
with me in this world.
"I finally see that I'm worth it."
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