Read Chicken Soup for the Dieter's Soul for Free Online Page B

my life as it had started out, in poverty and want. Deep in my mind, in my heart, did I think I was doing it for him? Did I really believe that every overindulgence on the part of the teenage me, and later the young-adult me, could somehow justify the faith that a little-boy me had placed in his helplessly frustrated mantra? You bet I did. You see, I owed it to him. The only way to justify his lack was in my own abundance. The greater my excess, the less he haunted my dreams. And it had to be reproven every day, every hour, every time the opportunity arose to either deny myself (We don’t have the money for . . .) or to slake my hunger, thirst and desire (whatever I want).
    I was thirty-five years old and growing rapidly toward 400 pounds before a stronger, more insistent voice finally drowned out the mantra. This voice was the fear of death. Within three months I had been diagnosed with diabetes, high blood pressure and a cholesterol level so high that it couldn’t be charted. I could barely cross the room without losing my breath. At home I had a wonderful, loving wife who cared for and supported me, a church full of people who I loved and who loved me, and the first steps taken toward my dream of being a novelist. The only thing that stood in the way of being a healthy, happy, successful man was a little boy in a dingy apartment kitchen repeating over and over, “Whatever I want. . . .”
    And by some miracle, by the earnest prayers of my loved ones, I finally listened to a new voice. Another year has passed since then and I’m now several weeks out from my Roux en-Y (RNY) surgery. Forty-five pounds have disappeared since the operation, as well as forty before, and another pound follows almost daily. But I still hear the continuous calling from the pantry and refrigerator, and the whispers as I drive past the seemingly innumerable fast-food joints between my work and home.
    So I must remember whose voice it is that I’m hearing. Food has no voice, I remind myself; it is deaf, dumb and dead, a collection of elements and nutrients that cannot act on me unless I act on them first. No, food does not call to me. I call to me—a younger, lesser version of myself who only understands that he is being told, once again, what he cannot have. I struggle to teach him a new mantra, as I struggle to justify his deprivation: “When I grow up, I will have whatever I need.” And after all these years I begin to realize that maybe that is what he really meant.
    Perry P. Perkins

Finally, Success—A New Me!
    T he secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.
    Buddha
    No one except my doctor really knew how much I weighed. Every time I had to renew my driver’s license and was asked if anything had changed, I said “No” and wondered if I could go to jail for lying to the secretary of state. Now, for the first time since I was about thirty, I’m legal.
    I used to claim my excess weight was postpregnancy weight, but since I’m now sixty-one with sons thirty-five and thirty-six and actually gained only twelve pounds with each pregnancy, it seems a bit ridiculous.
    I’ve gone to Weight Watchers, TOPS and other weight-loss groups. I succumbed to everymagazine at the checkout counters that promised to share the secret of losing weight. I used incentives, like “the class reunion is coming up, I need to lose forty pounds in two weeks.”
    Having been in the healthcare field, I knew how to eat properly and be healthy. I knew all the dangers of being overweight. But only when the scare of things that “could” go wrong actually became a reality did I wake up and smell the Columbian brew.
    Each time I had a physical and passed (and I’m an overachiever, so I’m used to passing tests), I said a prayer of thanks and promised God I would give him a hand and help out in the being healthy department. I guess he