“My friends, they call me the Health Maniac, and sing ‘She’s A Maniac’ when I come in the room,” chuckles 34-year-old Rikki Henry.
She accepts the good-natured teasing in stride, knowing that she earns it each time.
Henry has a demanding job as an assistant to the vice president for business and financial affairs at the Harris-Stowe State University.
When she attends gatherings, events or eats anywhere outside of her home, Henry carries a plastic snack bag of food to consume. Eating only one serving size of the foods of her choosing, exercising, drinking plenty of water and sheer willpower dropped her dress size from a screaming tight size 18 to a comfortably-fitting size 6—shedding about 75 pounds in the process. Henry went from 215 pounds at her heaviest to 140 pounds in 2005.
“I was a fat kid,” Henry said. “I see what obesity does for us as blacks and I said I was not going to do it.”
Her personal health mission started in 2001, shortly after she began working at Harris-Stowe. That winter, Henry and some cousins made a bet on who could lose the most weight.
“They went to Weight Watchers. I never went. They lost more weight than me,” Henry recalled. But she did pay attention to what they were doing, and put together her own version to diet.
“After I lost about 15 pounds, that was not my focus anymore. I wanted to get it together and be healthy,” Henry said.
The idea of “healthy” made Henry put her best foot forward.
“I started reading up on the health aspect because I wasn’t even an avid runner. I may have walked on a treadmill a couple of times but I didn’t do any real exercise. I started exercising, eating right and I was just reviewing the whole aspect of being healthy,” Henry said. “Then I went cold turkey. I cut out eating sweets. I started portioning my food. I bought those snack bags and portioned my food according to the snack bags. Whatever didn’t fit in the snack bags, I did not have.”
Henry said the snack bags keep her away from eating out of vending machines. Equally important, she plans and prepares all of her meals and snacks, and eats only for nutrition—not entertainment.
“I eat for true nutrients and that’s all to satisfy hunger. I try to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables and I drink water all day,” she said.
On the rare occasion she drinks soda—it’s a diet soda. Henry doesn’t like the “fake sugar” in commercial drinks. “I usually drink ginger green tea unsweetened, sometimes with honey and lemon.”
Henry found crunchy and healthier substitutes when she wanted sweets.
“I bought low-fat graham crackers and animal crackers, because low-fat graham crackers have 1.5 grams of fat and animal crackers have .5 and they both are sweet.” Henry said. “And apples, I ate them all the time because they are naturally sweet.”
Healthy eating and running for exercise turned Henry into a marathon competitor.
“I ran a half marathon (13.1 miles) at the St. Louis Marathon and the St. Patrick’s Day Marathon,” she said. Then, she trained for the “big kahuna” race in a tropical paradise.
“I trained for a marathon last year and gained between seven and ten pounds for marathon eating—for the American Heart Association Marathon in Kona, Hawaii. I ran 27.2 miles in 6 hours and 9 seconds,” Henry said.
“I ran 19.5 straight miles. I walked three miles and I ran the last four with a torn I-T band.” (The I-T or iliotibial band is made up of strong fibers that run along the outside of the thigh, from the gluteal muscles to the tibia, located just below the knee.)
Henry dropped the pounds from her marathon weight and continues to exercise and eat well. Healthy living allowed Henry to conquer her one food nemesis—popcorn.
“I would eat one bag of popcorn at work, one at class that night and another bag when I got home,” she described. “Now I only eat it every once in a while, but I don’t have to have it. I only eat enough to satisfy the crunch—then I don’t want it anymore.”
At home, she prepares two different menus—one for her hubby and another herself. She thinks he is beginning to pick up her healthy habits.
“He says that he doesn’t even notice that I’ve lost weight. But when he sees the different pictures of me being larger, he says, ‘God, Rikki, you were big.’”
That only furthers her resolve.
“I’m going to keep preaching health, even if they don’t listen to it, and I am talking health and wholeness.”