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Today's Daily Dose of Hope is sponsored by 1440, the free daily newsletter for the insatiably curious. In about five minutes each morning, it gives you a fact-driven rundown of the day's news from 100+ sources, without the clickbait. If you believe, as I do, that hope grows best on a foundation of clear eyes and good information, give it a try.
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At the urging of a good friend of mine, I’m selectively going back to old posts and sharing them with you, especially since we weren’t live on the KIT platform until July 8, 2026. And we’ve had so many new members of our hopeful community since then. Below is a post from July 28, 2026, along with an update that is called out. I hope you enjoy it.
I weigh too much. It has been an issue for a long while — and one of the major contributing factors to my heart attack and subsequent flatlining eight years ago.
Following doctor’s orders, I became a vegan, exercise fairly regularly, get massage treatments, and meditate. Right after my heart attack, I lost 40 pounds being very compliant to all of the above. Yet six years in, I started to eat too much — both in the evening and once I began wandering back out into the world again. You see, it is tough to be a vegan. And I found myself eating all kinds of dark chocolate and breads, all loaded with sugar. Sugar is incredibly addictive, and yes, my inclination has been to migrate right to it. So I eat too much of it.
Even though my blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol are exceptional, I weigh too much. So a couple of years ago, I was prescribed a GLP-1, which shall go unnamed. After my resting heart rate hit 132, the folks in the emergency room told me to using stop it. I complied. Then I was prescribed another GLP-1+ (again, unnamed). In about a year, I lost three to four pounds. When I moved to a third GLP-1++, I was given the baby dose for two months. That’s when I learned that GLP-1+ had actually been working — just to keep me from gaining. Why do I say that? On the baby dose of the third GLP-1++, I gained 10 pounds.
Now I’m on the official “weight loss” dose of GLP-1++, and it seems to be working — four pounds down in the last week. Update: I’m now down about 12 pounds (about .86 of a stone) as of this writing.
So why am I telling you all of this? Because I was losing hope. And hey — it returned this past week. I took my second official weight-loss dose yesterday, and I know I will lose weight. Frankly, my life depends on it. And you, members of this hopeful community, would possibly miss your Daily Dose of Hope if I weren’t around to write it. I will succeed, and I will be patient in doing so.
Hope needs something to grab onto
Researchers who study hope — starting with the psychologist Charles Snyder — break it into three parts: a goal, a pathway to get there, and agency, which is the belief that you’re the one who can actually walk that pathway. Agency is the part that says “I can do this,” not just “this is possible.” It’s the difference between watching a road exist and believing your own two feet can carry you down it.
That’s exactly what happened to me over the last two years. I had a goal the whole time. I never lacked pathways, either — I had three different medications, a vegan diet, exercise, massage, meditation. What I lost, somewhere between the 132 heart rate and the 10-pound gain on a “working” drug, was agency. I stopped believing I was the one steering this. It started to feel like something was happening to me rather than something I was doing.
The four pounds this past week didn’t just move a number on a scale. They handed agency back to me. And that’s what hope researchers keep finding in study after study: hope isn’t just wishful thinking, it’s fuel for actually adhering to treatment, sticking with hard behavior change, and recovering from illness. People with more agency thinking take more preventive action and adjust better when things go sideways. I’m living proof of both halves of that — the losing and the regaining.
I will succeed, and I will be patient in doing so. If you are on any type of a similar journey, there is great hope that you, too, will succeed!
Question
When did you have hope about something, only to have it dashed and then have it return?
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