Community Highlights - The Difference Between Hopelessness and Hope

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Week of 6/11/2009 - Featured Board Post

The Difference Between Hopelessness and Hope

FADUCK

I just read the account of a woman who started at 360 pounds and has lost 85 so far.

I joined SparkPeople with the worst attitude. I mean, I was SO discouraged and SO sick and tired of trying to manage my eating habits. I really didn't want anything to do with a bunch of perky people giving me stupid "diet advice" I mean, puleese! What more can be said than "eat less, exercise more." Blahblahblah. But then I read one account of someone who'd lost over a hundred pounds, then another, then a bunch more, on and on... In spite of myself, I started paying attention, started feeling like "I can do this. It's NOT impossible!"

Wow, what a difference between hopelessness and hope.

You know what SparkPeople really does best? It offers hope. How can anyone not believe that maybe...maybe...maybe it could be possible for me?

Reading stories like that one, and others--story after story of people from all walks of life, at all ages and stages, at all levels of physical health who are losing massive amounts of weight, learning to take care of themselves, finding renewed self esteem and energy in their lives is just awe inspiring.

The amount of bravery it would take for a person who weights 360 pounds to take the first step towards a better life absolutely inspires me. I know the number of failures that came before. Failures that just grind a person down into hopelessness.

Hope shines out for all of us when we read stories like this.

Read and reply to this post.

Our goal is to make the SparkPeople Community the most positive online community in the world for reaching goals and getting support. In this weekly email, we share an inspiring member post from the millions of posts at SparkPeople each month.

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