Her mother may have been legendary “Slender” model, Iman, but Iman’s daughter was far from her size. In an interview with Glamour magazine the daughter of Iman, Zulekha Haywood, talks about going from a size 26 to a size 6 via gastric bypass surgery. WOW! Check out excerpts from her interview:

BEFORE PICTURE

‘I have more or less been on a diet since I was eight years old. None of them worked,’ she told Glamour magazine in the U.S.’An overweight kid and already dining for sport, my first was the “basta” diet. At home, my mother, Iman, a beauty icon and devotee of clean eating, would whisper “basta” (“enough” in Italian) when I was in danger of overeating.

She decided on gastric band surgery after doctors said her future health would be at risk from being morbidly obese.

“One month postsurgery, I was back at work and down 20 pounds. Other people couldn’t see the difference, but I could feel it. Before the surgery, a reasonable portion left me feeling deprived; I was always thinking about my next meal. After the surgery, good food in moderation was unbelievably satisfying. To feel that way and lose weight so quickly was both exhilarating and strange at the same time.

Six months in, I was down another 80 pounds. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have to shop in a plus-size store. (Yay, H&M!) But it felt foreign and made me anxious. There were so many things to choose from, I enlisted friends to help me shop, because I couldn’t tackle it all at once. A year later I was 160 pounds and, because of my height, a size 6. A staggering number of people walked up to me asking if I was a model.”

AFTER PICTURE