Where Is The 'Hope' When My Diet Fails?

I want to talk with you today about a four-letter word that so many people going on a diet are desperately searching for. No, it's not "food," although I'm sure that four-letter word is on the minds of many dieters especially early on. Neither is it "luck" because finding a plan that will help you lose weight and keep it off forever takes a lot more than that. The word I am thinking of is "hope."

There's an acronym for this word that has always stuck with me:

Helping
Other
People
Excel

Helping other people excel at losing weight and improving their health is exactly what I am all about with my efforts here at this blog and elsewhere because I know what it's like to be in a seemingly helpless and hopeless situation.

When you weigh 410 pounds, wear size 62-inch waist pants and 5XL shirts, take three prescription medications, constantly feel ridiculed and scorned by staring onlookers, and wonder how much longer you'll have to keep living this miserable existence known as life, there's no other way to feel.

Trapped, imprisoned, and no way out--that was my life prior to 2004. I feigned happiness on the outside, but deep within I was screaming for help looking for just a small glimmer of hope. Oh God get me out of this wretched existence I am living so that I can move on with my life already. Is this the best that it gets? I don't want to die young and I feel like life has dealt me a raw deal!

Perhaps you think I just described how YOU feel. I'm sure my own personal experience with obesity has resonated with many of you because I see the exact same sentiments expressed in e-mail after e-mail from dear souls who want me to reassure them that they can find the same hope for overcoming their weight problem that I did. I never want to get used to hearing these gut-wrenching stories of pain and anguish and I don't think I ever will.

Here's one from a woman in San Diego, California that came this week:

Hi Jimmy,

I am one of probably thousands of e-mails that you get and hope that you somehow run into mine. I was online, yet again, seeking some help for my health, which is being ruined by my obesity.

I have tried them all--from Weight Watchers, to Jenny Craig, to the grapefruit diet, to the original Atkins diet, to LA Weight Loss, to most recently, Slim-Fast. None of them seem to work and I just keep getting bigger and bigger.

I now have high blood pressure and my feet, knees, and lower back bother me when I walk. I'm going to the gym and walking on the treadmill 50 minutes a day for the past month, and every other day, I add in weights, but I still see no improvements.

To make matters worse, I live in San Diego where it's verrrrry image conscious and if you're obese, you wind up being excluded from social situtations and even getting a good job!!

I'm at my wit's end and it's very depressing. In fact, the past few days have been so discouraging for me that I haven't even made it to the gym. UGH!

I have a mild allergy to wheat, so I am trying to elminate that from my diet, but don't know how or what to eat anymore to get the weight off. I've tried to find "The Biggest Loser" trainer Bob Harper online to get his advice but he's nowhere to be found. What would you recommend??

Please...............help....................me....................

Click here to read my response at the "30-In-30" blog to this seemingly helpless, hopeless situation and how I think my reader can rise triumphantly over this seemingly impossible health and weight mountain that she now faces.