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"  Jen Ramey is telling me the story of her life over breakfast at the restaurant Maialino in Manhattan. Without even casting an eye over the decadent Italian menu, she fishes out an herbal tea bag from her purse. She asks for a cup of hot water and urges me to get the doughnuts and cream so she can watch me eat them. A year ago, she would have ordered the doughnuts and a chocolate croissant. A year ago, she was 240 pounds.  Ramey, 48, is one of the most powerful model managers in the fashion industry. Her roster at IMG boasts some of the best girls in the business, like Kate Moss, Daria Werbowy, and Lily Donaldson, which means she&amp;#039;s perennially surrounded by young and very thin beauties. But she herself was always on the high end of zaftig. After almost three decades of wrestling with obesity and yo-yo dieting, Ramey had had her fill. Famously tough and hard charging, she&amp;#039;s never one to mince words. &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t realize how fucked up my relationship with food was until I wasn&amp;#039;t involved with it anymore,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I think I was addicted to food.&amp;quot;  Very recently, Ramey realized that something that happened to her 30 years ago may very well have contributed to her adult obesity. She got pregnant at 18 and gave the baby, a girl, up for adoption. &amp;quot;I probably gained about 90 pounds during the pregnancy because I didn&amp;#039;t know nothing &amp;#039;bout birthing no babies,&amp;quot; she says self-deprecatingly. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m from Georgia, and I was a little naive back then. I never lost that baby weight. So now I can&amp;#039;t tell you if that was emotional baggage that I was holding onto for all those years, but I felt guilty.&amp;quot; Enter trainer extraordinaire Angelo Sorrenti, the muscle-bound cousin of a longtime friend, fashion photographer Mario Sorrenti. Armed with a drill-sergeant intensity, a fashion-world pedigree, and a long list of dramatic weight-loss success stories, Sorrenti was convinced he could change Ramey&amp;#039;s life. &amp;quot;She tried everything--therapists, chiropractors. Nothing was working. So I told her to stop everything,&amp;quot; says Sorrenti, who hails from Naples, Italy, and has a Neapolitan accent to match. &amp;quot;She had kidney malfunctions, liver malfunctions, her hormone levels were high, she was on ADD medications, and her white-blood-cell count was high.&amp;quot; He adds later, &amp;quot;The adoption was a trauma for her that was devastating. She became obese and she stayed obese, until now.&amp;quot; Sorrenti began helping Ramey in the winter of 2009, analyzing her blood work and then creating an all-encompassing diet and exercise plan calibrated for her body&amp;#039;s needs. In fact, Sorrenti is unwavering about his individualized approach--one of the reasons it costs an arm and a leg to get him to whittle yours (though he&amp;#039;s giving his ethos a more populist reach by opening a gym called ASIAM Center in Manhattan this year and rolling out a line of organic supplements by the same name).  He&amp;#039;s still loath to describe a complete sample regimen. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s no such thing as a diet for everyone,&amp;quot; Sorrenti proclaims. &amp;quot;Your metabolism is different than mine; your needs are different. There are diets that can be good for 10 people but can harm 10 million people.&amp;quot; A quick peek at a client&amp;#039;s program reveals his Touch of Health Soup, which consists of chickpeas, walnuts, celery, garlic, parsley, olive oil, and water. With grim determination, Ramey followed hers, preparing a day&amp;#039;s worth of meals at home and lugging plastic containers around town. She stopped drinking, drastically cut down on socializing, and hauled herself to the gym. When she began, she couldn&amp;#039;t do a single sit-up. &amp;quot;She couldn&amp;#039;t walk straight,&amp;quot; recalls Sorrenti. &amp;quot;She was very unstable. She would fall. She would cry. I had to fight with her to keep her on the program. Jen is not easy. She drove me crazy. But little by little, she hated me, she loved me, she hated me, she loved me. Like everyone.&amp;quot;  Considering Ramey&amp;#039;s sinewy limbs in a black sleeveless minidress, her metamorphosis is astonishing. Well, to most. &amp;quot;Jen is one of the strongest women I know. I&amp;#039;m not surprised that she succeeded in what she put her mind to,&amp;quot; says client Freja Beha Erichsen. &amp;quot;Obviously she looks fantastic,&amp;quot; says Lily Donaldson. &amp;quot;But also she really went for it and didn&amp;#039;t give up. I found that very inspiring.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;After two months, I could leg press 360 pounds,&amp;quot; Ramey says proudly. And after four months of living by Sorrenti&amp;#039;s directives, including 30 to 45 minutes of cardio four or five days a week and hour-long training sessions three or four times a week, she lost half her body weight. Radical? Yes. Safe? According to Sorrenti, his clients&amp;#039; health improves across the board, and he makes sure they eat healthily and plenty. Starvation, he says, is a losing proposition. &amp;quot;By depriving yourself of calories, which are essential for your metabolism, you are depriving yourself of essential nutrients,&amp;quot; he explains.  While the initial euphoria of shimmying into designer samples--Ramey went from a size 18 to a size 4--is still fresh, her indignation at being mistreated when she was heavy still smarts. &amp;quot;I once walked into a store and asked why they didn&amp;#039;t carry 16&amp;#039;s,&amp;quot; she recalls. &amp;quot;And they said, &amp;#039;Well, we don&amp;#039;t have room.&amp;#039; And I said, &amp;#039;For the people or for the clothes?&amp;#039; I was really pissed off because the whole idea of going to shop and have fun and spend money for women size 16 and over is impossible. I&amp;#039;ll never change my mind about that.&amp;quot; She reaped health benefits from her weight loss, namely significantly lower cholesterol and hormone levels, but she still had a serious issue with which to contend. She had always had fibrous breasts, and pre-Sorrenti, not only was her bra size 38H, but doctors had found five masses. Ramey took Sorrenti&amp;#039;s advice and waited until she&amp;#039;d finished his program before being reexamined. His logic: The weight loss and nutritious diet would improve her health all around. The good news was that the five masses were reduced to two, but the terrifying addendum was that both were precancerous. She took the news in signature tough-girl stride. &amp;quot;I wasn&amp;#039;t going to sit there and cry about it. But that&amp;#039;s why breast-cancer awareness is important, because otherwise some women just sit on this stuff,&amp;quot; she explains. Doctors removed both lumps, and, happily, Ramey avoided radiation, chemotherapy, and any anticancer meds. &amp;quot;I think it probably would have been a lot worse had I not lost 120 pounds,&amp;quot; she admits. Ironically, all the years that Ramey wasn&amp;#039;t taking care of herself, she was taking care of everyone else. She has loyal friends and considers Kate Moss family. Her model clients have benefited from Ramey&amp;#039;s fierce devotion to steering their careers safely through shark-infested industry waters while brokering lucrative cosmetic and fashion contracts. &amp;quot;Jen manages to cut straight to the core. There&amp;#039;s never any BS with her,&amp;quot; attests Erichsen. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m a nurturer,&amp;quot; Ramey says. &amp;quot;Even though I&amp;#039;m a bitch, you always know that you can trust me. I&amp;#039;m not going to let you fall.&amp;quot; Despite that maternal instinct, she&amp;#039;s still unsure whether to seek out the daughter she gave up. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think I&amp;#039;m ready yet,&amp;quot; says Ramey. &amp;quot;I think there are three ways it can be. She could have died. That&amp;#039;s the worst-case scenario. Or she could be a complete drug addict, downtrodden, and it&amp;#039;s all my fault. The best is that she&amp;#039;s happy, she doesn&amp;#039;t need me, and I did the right thing.&amp;quot;  Bit by bit, Ramey is now doing the right thing for herself too. Decades of hiding inside her weight have taken their toll, but she&amp;#039;s now emerging slowly. &amp;quot;She was very self-conscious,&amp;quot; says Sorrenti. &amp;quot;As a defense mechanism, she created a mask for herself where she was very hard, and she&amp;#039;s not. She&amp;#039;s a very sweet person. She says that being around all these beautiful thin girls didn&amp;#039;t affect her. It did, of course, subconsciously. She doesn&amp;#039;t think so, but I do.&amp;quot;  For more information on Sorrenti&amp;#039;s weight-loss program, go to angelosorrenti.com. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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