Chicken Soup for the Dieter's Soul by Jack Canfield Read Free Book Online

got tired of listening to that tune because one day he threw me a real curveball.
    My blood sugar was a little elevated, so my doctor ordered a glucose tolerance test. I’ll be darned if I didn’t flunk a test! She said, “Well, you didn’t stop at pre-diabetes —you’re diabetic.” The date was November 15, 2004.
    I went home totally scared to death, angry and positive that any good quality of my life was indeed over. I read the booklets my doctor had given me, went to the pharmacy and purchased the little blood test meter. My husband took me out to dinner, where I ate like Miss Piggy on the way to the bacon factory.
    I began counting carbs and testing the next day. Maybe because I hate math, I hate to count anything—calories, carbs, fat grams—losing ten pounds seemed like such a huge task. But I was determined. Not determined halfway, like before when I’d lose five pounds and gain them right back, but really determined.
    Even before my consultation with the dietician at the diabetes clinic, I’d lost seven pounds. By the first of the year, I’d lost seventeen pounds—OVER THE HOLIDAYS! My blood sugar dropped immediately with the slightest weight loss.
    When I realized counting carbs was easier than I thought, it became a way of life. I knew what I could eat. I ate three meals a day with three small snacks in between if I wanted, which usually I didn’t. I expected the dietician to give me a whole list of foods I could never eat again. He didn’t. It was all about portion control. What a concept! Of course, I already knew that half a box of spaghetti wasn’t really a serving. But, come on, two ounces of pasta! Show me someone content with that and I’ll show you a fuzzy little rodent in a cage with an exercise wheel. But, guess what? I am content with that.
    I enjoy my food now more than ever because I’m busy tasting and enjoying it and not just shoveling it in. When asked my secret, I say, “I’m eating for one, not for Sandi and a third world country.”
    I was still fat on my sixtieth birthday. The number stuck in my throat. I couldn’t even say it. Now, as I approach sixty-two this summer, I can say it with ease because I don’t look or feel my age. As I listen to talk of diets and weight struggles, I’m amazed at how truly easy it ultimately was.
    So, that’s the end of my story, my fat story that is. This is the beginning of the NEW me story and my new healthy life. I wear a size 6 jeans—real zip-up jeans now, not elastic-waist-fat-girl jeans. I work out at the health club three times a week (I started out at five to six times a week). I walk two miles and work out on the weight machines. I go to yoga classes. I eat what I want to— portion control. I’ve lost sixty pounds and feel twenty years younger. I have unlimited energy, and most important, my blood sugar is totally normal even when I go a little higher on the carbs once in a while.
    I am healthy, energetic and happy. My doctor has changed my diagnosis, and she smiled when I said, “At my age, I want to be healthy and feel good. Looking good is the bonus.”
    Sandra L. Tatara

The Mirror Doesn’t Lie
    K eep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.
    William James
    I was in the mall the other day, rushing to get errands done and pausing just for a second to shift packages from one arm to the other. For a fleeting moment, I got that feeling women are apt to get—a sense of being stared at, that a set of discerning eyes was looking and passing judgment. I shrugged the feeling off and continued on my way. When you’re fifty-something and have looked fairly dowdy most of your adult life—not just in an encroaching golden age—you get used to the looks, or lack of them. When you’re carrying more than a few extra pounds, you can find yourself teetering on a tightrope between people staring or drowning in a sea of invisibility.
    Strangers pass judgmentwhen you’re obese. Itmay be as overt as a