Fighting weight

"It was more than that I had kissed away my twenties and was miserable. I couldn't be naked with anybody, couldn't wear a backless dress, couldn't go to the beach—all the things a person should be able to do."When Muhammad Ali's daughter Khaliah hit 325 pounds, she didn't need to be told again that she was morbidly obese. A lifetime of dieting, of starving, had not helped. She thought about gastric bypass surgery but couldn't pursue it after reading the statistic that as many as one in twenty-five people suffers complications, and sometimes death, from the operation. She could not afford to risk leaving her young son without a mother.Miserable, depressed, and unable to walk up a flight of stairs without losing her breath, she did not know which way to turn—until a friend pointed her toward a new type of surgery called gastric banding. It is just as effective as gastric bypass with a fraction of potential complications. With the band placed around her stomach and completely taking away her hunger, Khaliah slimmed down to half her former size. The band she used has been the surgical option of choice in Europe for more than a decade but is only just now arriving in the United States.