Mariner Square Athletic Club - Experience a Club, Belong to a Community - Serving the Bay Area, Alameda, Oakland

Felisha West curls a dumbbell as she waits outside the spin room for her noon cycling class, a towel tucked into her T-shirt and her hair pulled back in a navy blue bandanna. She sports sunglasses, sips from a coffee cup and exhibits her unique, electric smile that so many people remember her by.

"The coffee relaxes me. It gets me mentally ready," she says.

On this day, West has already spent 35 minutes on the elliptical machine and done some leg work upstairs.

West, who turned 49 on Dec. 27, can still remember when taking part in such an exercise group would have been impossible. Not long ago she weighed more than 350 pounds and serious complications from diabetes were threatening to kill her.

Her three daughters were scared they would lose their mom way too soon.

"My kids would look up and say, "Mommy, I don't want you to go in the hospital this year,"" she recalls. "I had to lose weight. I was having a lot of chronic illness."

Initially, West turned to Weight Watchers, light exercise – she would walk down a couple of driveways at first, then around the block and eventually all over her Oakland neighborhood – and then opted for gastric bypass surgery. Four years out from the January 2005 operation, she is now working out regularly, eating better and down to 197 pounds. Her doctors would like her to reach about 188.

"What people don't realize is the surgery is only a tool," West says. "It's not a fix. You have to adjust your lifestyle. It's not something you do by yourself. You do it with your family, and your spouse has to be supportive. I said: 'He did pretty well. He got a new wife out of it.'"

Her husband, David, has been her rock through this major transformation. They even spin together many evenings once he's done working for Alameda County – and now "he's addicted." He received cycling shoes for Christmas.

West typically exercises in the evenings, as she works as a community assistant and parent liaison for the Oakland Unified School District by day. Not to mention things are pretty busy at home. Her three daughters are all in the house, one with a baby girl, and two foster sons also live in West's recently remodeled home.

At this point, she is feeling healthy and ready to maintain this lifestyle for good. It's been an adjustment, though, because some people she's known for years don't always recognize her – not so strange considering she didn't even recognize herself at first. She's had to learn not to snack and how to keep her stress levels under control.

She's undergone reconstructive surgery on her arms, back and chest areas to remove excess skin. She hopes her story helps others realize their options. Some people, she says, turn to food again as a coping mechanism because the changes are so severe.

West will have to closely monitor her diabetes for the rest of her life. She never plans to be skinny.

"You have to be psychologically ready for the aftermath. It's something else," West says. "Thank God I had the medical support...I liked the way I was. The weight was me. I was comfortable. To lose the weight was losing part of who I was. But now, even though I lost the weight, I still feel like me."

The smile on her face tells it all. And that's just part of what everybody notices about her now.