Spokane’s James Hicks weighs in on ‘Dr. Phil’

If you catch James Hicks on “Dr. Phil” today, you’ll be seeing much less of him than you would’ve just a year ago.

But, then, that’s why the Spokane man was asked to appear on the talk show in the first place.

Hicks has shed 250 pounds over the past 12 months, thanks to a combination, he says, of Weight Watchers and Dr. Phil McGraw’s book, “The Ultimate Weight Solution.”

“I just literally did it one week at a time, one piece at a time, one meal at a time,” says Hicks, a corporate trainer for WestCoast Hospitality.

And he’s not done yet.

Hicks started at 570 pounds, a weight that left him on oxygen with chronic bronchitis and doctor’s orders not to walk more than 50 yards.

He was only 30 years old.

He’d even been cleared to undergo gastric bypass surgery, a drastic, last-ditch procedure that shrinks the stomach and causes weight loss.

Just before going under the knife, though, his insurance company decided not to cover the procedure.

“I was basically left with no options,” he says.

And then his office started a Weight Watchers program at work. The cost of the plan would be deducted right from his paycheck. It was too easy to pass up.

About the same time, his wife bought him Dr. Phil’s weight-loss book.

“It didn’t just talk about diet and exercise,” Hicks says. “It focuses on everything in your life you need to get straight.”

Finally, after being overweight since he was 6, after trying diet after diet, the pieces clicked: He didn’t need to change what he ate; he needed to change his life.

He made this his New Year’s resolution. And, unlike most of us, he stuck with it.

Since then, Hicks has followed the Weight Watchers plan religiously. Some weeks he loses 5 pounds, others less than a pound. But he’s never attended a weekly weigh-in to find out he’d regained any weight.

At first, Hicks concentrated solely on his eating. The bronchitis made it too tough to start exercising.

But once he lost 10 percent of his body weight, nearly 60 pounds, he got a pedometer and began walking.

He started walking to and from his wife’s office to WestCoast, about a mile each way.

Then he started coming to work an hour early so he could get in more walking. He was walking four miles a day, then seven.

Hicks had lost about 100 pounds when he completed his first Bloomsday.

“We were just about the last finishers,” he says. “But we made it … And I’m going to run it this next year.”

Hicks was surfing the Web a couple of weeks ago when he landed on Dr. Phil’s site. He decided to send the host an e-mail.

“Dr. Phil’s book basically changed my life,” he says. “It got me thinking about diet in a way I never have before.”

That was Sunday night. By Monday morning, the producers had already written back, asking for before and after pictures.

Within days, he found himself in Los Angeles, sitting on stage, talking to Dr. Phil.

Hicks told him how much the book had helped him.

“He started getting choked up,” he says. “You could tell he was really happy for me.”

Hicks weighs about 320 pounds now. He still has about 130 pounds to lose he says.

But reaching his weight goal won’t be the end of the success story, he says. He’d like to train for a marathon, maybe a triathlon, too. And, he hopes to become a motivational speaker.

“I want to inspire people,” he says. “I want people to know it’s not impossible, even though it’s a huge undertaking.”

Hicks’ life is set to change even more any day now. His wife is expecting their first child.

“My son’s never going to know a dad that can’t do things or that can’t move around,” he says.