Morning Burn Guide

[sagasan]

While that was a lot of weight, it didn't feel like much to him. When he looked in a mirror, he couldn't even detect a difference in his appearance. He was still wearing the same "Dr. Nick" T-shirts that he wore Opening Day at Dodger Stadium. He had to admit they were a bit looser, but all he saw in the mirror was the same old mound of human flesh. Nick fell into a funk. On July 4, he found himself in Sitka, Morning Burn Alaska, where he had planned a daylong fishing trip with his brother John and two friends. He woke up at 4:30 a.m. feeling sorry for himself. He resented skinny people. Why were they thin and he was fat? What had he done to deserve his fate? Why did he feel such despair?

With a dark cloud following him, Nick and his brothers boarded a fishing boat at dawn to fish for salmon and halibut. After catching their limits of salmon inside the bay, the boat motored into deeper waters to catch the really big fish--Alaskan halibut. Leaving the safety of the bay, Nick thought that day, was a metaphor for what he was going through with his weight-loss odyssey. His weight had become such a monumental dilemma in his life that he had to leave the comfort of the bay and drive toward deep, choppy waters to seek the big catch of a healthy existence. No one caught a big one until late in the afternoon, when . . . Nick had a strike! His rod bounced off the railing, but he held on tight. He yanked with all his strength and cranked the reel as fast as he could. For the next forty-five minutes, he kept dipping the rod and reeling, dipping and reeling.

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The weight of that Alaskan halibut --103 pounds-- exactly matched the weight Dr. Nick had lost since April 1. Everything came together for him at that moment because something unspeakable had occurred. To Nick, it was a confirmation that he was on the right track, that he was right where he needed to be in his weight-loss journey. As pictures were snapped, he felt the same sense of awe that he felt when he stood in front of Michelangelo's David and the Sistine Chapel on a trip to Italy. He couldn't even articulate what was going through his mind, but it was a jumble of bewilderment, love, confirmation and validation. He knew he had been lifted from the depths of despair. This experience became the deciding moment of his trip, but more than that, the defining moment of his life.

When Nick returned home in time for Thanksgiving, his mother was shocked by his appearance. Some of his nieces and nephews didn't even recognize him. Nick, now weighing 269 pounds, had shed nearly 200 pounds. He ate his first solid food in nearly eight months on Thanksgiving Day: some vegetables and a baked potato. He continued to lose weight as he returned to solid food and his medical practice. Nick reached his low-water mark the following summer, when he weighed a svelte 197. The end of his long weight-loss trip was just a beginning, Nick learned. Now he would have to work at keeping the pounds off. Today, Nick weighs 220 pounds, and he has remained steady at that weight for three years. Everywhere he goes to tell his story, people clamor for advice how they can lose weight as well.

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