Fighting Weight
How I Achieved Healthy Weight Loss with "Banding," a New Procedure That Eliminates Hunger--Forever
"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. It is sure to become number one here too. Unlike gastric bypass surgery, gastric banding is reversible, is completely safe during pregnancy, involves no nutritional deficiencies, and best of all, takes away hunger forever, not just for the first year or so.Khaliah wraps her story of weight loss in this memoir of what it was like to grow up the daughter of one of the world's most famous men, and teams up with her surgeons at the New York University Medical Center to detail the lifetime of misery suffered by an obese girl; the ins and outs of the banding operation; and the joy, serenity, and health resulting from a solution that until now had eluded her.
Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.
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What the reading experience may hold
A fuller profile for choosing with more confidence—not just another copy of the preview.
Nonfiction · Fiction
Use these as starting points rather than limits; the most memorable books often stretch beyond their catalog labels.
Catalog signals suggest warfare and conflict, violence, death, or criminal harm, grief and loss. These notes may not be complete; consult a publisher or reader-supplied guide when detailed warnings matter.
These notes are inferred from available catalog information and may not be complete. Check a publisher or reader-supplied guide if you need comprehensive warnings.
Dark tone · Urgent pace
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
A good fit if…
Readers who want a thoughtful experience and enjoy noticing the connections beneath a book’s surface story.
This book's DNA
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This signal is descriptive, not a rating. It helps compare the kind of reading experience this edition may offer.
Spoiler-Free Emotional Arc
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A quick reading snapshot
Edition facts and catalog signals to help you decide whether this book fits what you want to read next.
- ISBN-13
- 978-0-0611-7094-2
- Language
- English
- Edition record
- OL9243646M
A more thoughtful way into this book
This guide uses the edition details and category signals above to help you choose deliberately. It does not replace the author's work or a full review.
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
Begin with its place in Nonfiction, then notice where the book resists that label.
Read for connection, not completion.
Mark one passage that sharpens the book's central concern and one that complicates it. That tension often reveals more than a quick summary.
Three questions to carry with you
- Whose perspective organizes the story, and whose perspective remains outside it?
- Which sources or lived experiences carry the author’s central argument?
- How does the book change the way you understand its larger subject?
Editorial framework by Wesley Bryan, BookenDeX Founder and Editor.
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