Hope for the Moment

None of the diets gave hope for a lifetime, just hope for the moment. ~ Joan B

How can we be without hope
when we prove over and over again
that every diet works, some more than others,
but that for the most part, there's a valid plan
at the core of each of them?
How can we continue month after month
to believe this time, finally, we've got the plan
to end all diets, the pathway to freedom from fat,
the road to being normal and happy and whole?
Because it's not a problem we developed suddenly,
a need to react to the failings of a few months,
the accumulation of an extra dress-size full,
the shrinking of all clothes in the size we once wore.
It's a problem we've dealt with from childhood --
at least most of us have -- and even for those
who grew to adults at normal size have suffered long,
have failed at dieting. But when diets don't work
where do you go? To the program that does work,
the one that changes not only the body
but the emotions and the mind. The plan that works.
And when we take that last step, we find hope.
Not hope that hangs up its hat at despair, at ineptitude,
at inability to diet that intensifies diet by diet...
Hope that works, that we see evidence of in lives around us,
that moves us slowly sometimes, at breakneck speed at others,
to the whole person we want to be!