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COPYRIGHT 2005 International Medical News Group
When patients came to Nick Yphantides, M.D., for advice on how to lose weight and keep it off, he used to tell them, "Do as I say, not as I do" before replying with specifics.
That's because the 6-foot-2-inch physician weighed 467 pounds.
"I was board-certified in hypocrisy," said Dr. Yphantides, a preventive medicine specialist based in Escondido, Calif., who is an advocate for the medically uninsured.
In 1996, he ran for a seat on the Palomar Pomerado, Calif., health district board of directors. He was just 31 years old, but the local newspaper referred to him as the big man with a huge heart.
"My campaign motto was "Big problems need big solutions. Vote for Dr. Nick: the big man for the big job,'" he recalled. "I was a big man with a big heart and big convictions."
He won the seat and went on to chair the health system's board of directors, but his push to make a difference for others came at the expense of his own health. A testicular cancer survivor, Dr. Yphantides said he became "so consumed with the mission, with the professional responsibilities, and with the requirements of maintaining what I had set out to do that I had to sacrifice my own health and balance in my own life."
That meant no time for exercise or making healthful food choices. As a result, markers of failing health began to show: borderline high blood pressure and high cholesterol, sleep apnea, and sore knees and ankles from the weight he carried....
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