's motd Tuesday Nov 9, 2010

[Guest guest]

THE PESSIMIST

Tuesday, 09 November 2010

Pam has been struggling with her

weight for as long as she can remember. And growing

up, to make matters worse, her mother loved to cook

and...to bake. So there were always fresh

cakes and pies in her family's house...all the

time.

When she was a teenager,

Pam went on quite a few diets in her efforts to lose

weight. And when she heard that the nasty-old habit

of smoking curbs the appetite, she fell for

it, turned to cigarettes and became a regular smoker.

When she was in college, Pam began attending

weight-loss meetings available on campus. And

whenever she did, she'd lose and gain back the same

few pounds, just about every month. If a family

member or friend asked how she was doing with her

weight, Pam would always "fudge" the truth...more

than a little!

"Oh, I've lost five pounds already," she'd

tell them. "Isn't it wonderful?" (Well, it

would've been...had it been true.)

After hiding the truth for so long and after so many

years of having no success losing the weight, Pam did

some serious soul-searching. She sat at her kitchen

table one afternoon, thinking about all of the times

she didn't make it and asked herself: Why even

bother trying to lose weight anymore?

She thought about the

decades now of what she'd put herself through trying

to lose the same 100 pounds or so. She even tried to

figure out how much money she'd spent over the years

at those weight-loss meetings and joining one gym

after another. She thought about all the different

sizes of clothes in her closet, bought as the numbers

on her scale only danced up and down...and mostly

up! All of those clothes in her closet and she

still couldn't wear those smallest sizes, I mean the

ones she really loved.

When she was out with her friends, Pam thought she

could just about read their minds. She figured they

just had to be thinking things like: "What's

wrong with Pam? She never sticks to any of the

diets she goes on. Seems she keeps getting bigger

and bigger. It really is such a shame. She's so

nice and has such a pretty face."

Well, maybe those were

things her friends were thinking but, truth is, they

were more of the things Pam was thinking...about

herself. She saw no hope in her future when

it came to losing weight. And now that she was in her

50s, the weight had begun causing her medical

problems, too. But still, those medical issues didn't

stop her from keeping a box of Entenmann's pastries in

her kitchen.

"Maybe I'm just supposed to be this way," she

thought to herself. "I guess I'll just have to

settle for what I weigh now, for the rest of my

life!"

Well today, you've met Pam the Pessimist.

Can you relate to her? Tomorrow, I'm going to talk to

you about another person and his name is .

Love,