Monica di Giacomo weighed 320 pounds and the trainer didn’t take on her. Now, after 10 years of work, Miami women are on the stage of bodybuilding competition.
After-photos tell you all what you like, congratulations, and everyone how wonderful she looks.
However, it is the photo above that makes Monica di Giacomo the most proud.
It’s a woman who wanted to kill her 37-year-old, a woman who felt she wasn’t loved, a woman who £320 thought she was worthless.
It is also a woman who went into the gym to ask for help. All trainers said no.
She was too big. She had too much health risks. She’ll quit soon anyway.
But it was also a woman who never gave up.
It’s a woman who keeps showing up and found a life-changing coach in one or more ways. It’s a woman who returned the next day when she was sore and tired.
It’s a woman who’s back, a woman who never gave up.
In September, ten years after that photo, she will compete in her first bodybuilding competition. She walks the stage at Fort Lauderdale’s convention center in a royal blue sparkly bikini, a spray tongue that emphasizes each muscle. Her husband and friends cheer for her. And the photographer captures the moment.
But it’s a photo of the first day that makes her smile – the previous one –
“She’s why I’m alive,” says Di Giacomo. “She did the job. She’s the reason I’m here.”
Fits in a world celebrating small women
Di Giacomo grew up in Miami in the 1980s in a world where Tiny was better.
She was never small and had a hard time fitting into the off-shoulder tops girls in neon miniskirts and shoulder tops worn at school.
She promised thin thighs in 30 days, worked out with Jane Fonda on VHS tape, and read a magazine that tried to find some steel pans. Like many women, she starved herself.
And she was binge-jing. (Like many people who hid it.)
She finds comfort in the food when her grandfather committed suicide in front of her, hugging her mother when she died of cancer, and when her decades-long partner didn’t introduce her to his friends. At 2am, the whole Oreo package disappeared at least temporarily.
She hid behind her black baggy sweatpants, an oversized T-shirt and hoodie. Her weight continued to rise.
“You’re so big and fat, so you’re going to be the size that people don’t see you as a person,” she says.
She felt like it wasn’t important anymore.
“I thought about suicide. I was very unhappy. I felt so worthless and no one had any value in my life,” she says.
The truth about 320 pounds
On her 37th birthday, Di Giacomo was about to leave her annual body after a routine blood draw.
“We’ll see you in three months,” she said.
“I won’t see the next visit,” she remembers telling her to a longtime doctor in the fall of 2015.
“Are you moving?” she asked.
“No, if you don’t make any changes, you’ll die,” her doctor told her.
Her cholesterol ranged more than twice as healthy as the 400s. Her blood pressure was 155/110 and was in high air. She was diabetic. She weighed 320 pounds.
The statistics were not new, but the dullness of her doctor was.
“That was when I knew. My doctor told me I was afraid of having a heart attack,” she says. “She said if I didn’t do anything, this was it.”
They discussed the plan. Di Giacomo had to work with a registered nutritionist and undergo weight loss surgery on the stomach sleeve and change her lifestyle.
By spring, she had surgery.
Like medical interventions such as weight loss medication and surgery, it does not work without lifestyle changes. Together, they are more effective than just dieting and exercise.
“People, it’s just you’re having surgery and you think it’s good,” she says. “But that’s not how it works. It’s not the magic surgery you have, and then everything’s fine. You need to change your life.”
“Everything I knew about food and diet was a lie.”
Di Giacomo stepped into the gym in Miami and tried to find a trainer.
In the intense reggaeton and techno music in the background, “each of them said no,” she says.
“They were afraid to work with me. I was this morbidly obese woman with high blood pressure, all in bad condition.”
She began exercising two days a week – walking on the treadmill on a stationary bike.
“My goal wasn’t to look good,” she says. “I just wanted to live.”
Finally, she finds a coach to take her.
She arrived quietly and booked. She hid not only her body but her emotions.
“She barely said the words,” her coach says. “She wasn’t smiling for the first year, probably until she lost 100 pounds. But she kept showing up.”
He sought work in the lab and created a plan from weight lifting to nutrition. That would go against everything Di Giacomo and women have been taught for years.
“Everything I knew about food and diet was a lie,” says Di Giacomo. “I had this perception: ‘You lift your weight. You’ll look like a man.’ I thought I had to eat like a little bird. ”
Now we know that weight loss is more complicated. It’s not just about eating less and exercising.
At the time, it felt like a personal failure of her own.
For decades, women will underestimate and still gain weight and blame themselves. Di Giacomo will find out what middle-aged women are learning now. The food could be her friend.
Instead of calories, more women count macros (protein, carbohydrates, fats). They are learning that you shouldn’t skip meals. I’m learning that excessively simple calorie deficits don’t always lead to weight loss. And they certainly aren’t synonymous with health.
Aerobic exercise can lead to energy expenditure that will lead to weight loss, but it doesn’t look toned. To make them look like the woman they dream of, they have to push her weight like the Olympian Irona Maher squats twice.
So instead of spending time on treadmills or oval machines, women are lifting weights. The gym is paying attention, with some locations reducing aerobic equipment by 40% in order to have more free weight space.
Her coach taught her about strength training. For a few weeks it was about building muscle. Sometimes I build my own beliefs.
The lesson came slowly. Instead of eating Oreo’s package, her coach told her to eat two cookies before going to bed and place two cookies on the nightstand. If she woke up with craving, she could eat two.
A few weeks later, there were still two cookies on the morning nightstand.
Instead, she learned to eat real food – and in a wealth of quantities. A daily meal of chicken and beef, fats like avocado, chicken and beef. All this also meant being friends with the biggest enemy of women, carbohydrates.
On most days, Ziacomo eats 147 grams of protein and 321 grams of carbohydrates. She eats about 2,500 calories, but most women are afraid.
Eat more – less – lean, that’s what science says. It is the key to balancing hormone balance and metabolism issues. Protein enriches people and supports fat loss. Protects carbohydrate fuel workouts and lean muscles. Women who are not bodybuilders still need to eat more.
I’m crying at the gym
Still, there was a day when Di Giacomo cried through the person in charge.
She doubted herself. She saw a high school girl who didn’t fit in her small miniskirt. There was a day when she would drive the gym crazy.
Her coach reminded her that small progress is progress. It moved her forward.
She continued to manifest through her breakup with her partner, through unemployment. It was just her and the barbell. It showed her that she had the power to build a new life herself, she was too afraid and unworthy.
Time at the gym has become the lonely time she needs to think about, the time she’s been looking forward to, the time she can see progress. It became as important to her mental health as her physical health.
Under the Smith machine, she learned to love those who were always there.
There was also something innate in showing up to look after herself, who broke everything that she was taught. Discipline was the purest form of courage.
Over the years, slowly, she lost 120 pounds and gained muscle. She removed the excess skin and tightened her stomach. She no longer needed blood pressure, diabetes medication, or statins.
She dripped more weight with her hoodie. She continued her training. And after falling in love with who she is and Monica, who was always there, she collapsed for someone who had been standing by her side the whole time.
Her coach. In the summer of 2022, she married Marino di Giacomo.
“She’s my heaviest client and now she’s my fitness,” says Marino di Giacomo, Marino bodybo coach. “And now she has my heart.”
“Even my stretch marks are cute.”
Monica di Giacomo thinks she grew up trying to make herself smaller, less space, and make herself even tastier for others.
She sees it before the photo. This is how she saw baggy sweatshirts and didn’t smile often. She is thinking about the day she wants to kill herself. At the time, her coach told her that when she felt dark she should go to spin class.
There were days she went to three classes.
But Di Giacomo sees someone else in these photos. A woman who was scared but just started something new, a woman who was exhausted but never gave up.
“I could tell her, but “You’re going to change more than you know. … Your world will be better – your health, your relationship, you belong to you,” she says. “I wouldn’t be here today without that girl.”
And she will tell her about who she is now: The woman dancing to Stevie B on the treadmill (at 10.5 slopes!) is a woman who supports clients on the stairs.
“I’m so happy right now. I’m not just loving myself. I really love myself,” says Di Giacomo. (“Even my stretch marks are cute!”)
She competes in bodybuilding events and shows that it is important for not only herself but other middle-aged women to take care of herself. That they are important.
Today, when she prepares for the show — it means she’s up her training and tightening up her nutrition — she’ll get 137 pounds and 14% body fat.
During her upcoming competition, her body will shine under the light, she will know that it is something you can see on stage.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, please call or text 988 or go to 988lifeline.org and contact 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline
Laura Trujillo is a national columnist focused on health and wellness. She is the author of “Back from the Shelf: A Daughter’s Truth and the Exploration of Updates” and can be contacted at ltrujillo@usatoday.com.
