In the beginning

Some of my Facebook friends have encouraged me to write a book about healthy eating and my journey back to health. With recipes!
This is the start of it, then. And since I have just started my journey, you can follow along with me and hold me accountable for honesty.
Here is me right now:

Nice, grandmotherly type, right?

I don't mind being a grandmother, but this is not a healthy one. I want to be around to dance at my grandchildren's weddings. 

I will be 62 in a few days, August 19, 1952. Other details are that I am 5'3" tall, and currently weigh 218 pounds. And far from being a big beautiful woman, I store all that extra fat mostly in my belly - where it can kill me. I envy those women who are overweight but still manage to have a discernable waistline.

I have Type II diabetes, high cholesterol, slightly elevated blood pressure, and lots of aches and pains from back surgery on my cervical discs and from osteoarthritis. I also have had aortic valve replacement in 2008. Lovely scar that gives you.

It could be worse. At my worst, I weighed 232. I remember thinking, when I hit that number, that I had weighed 116 in high school. I was carrying around a whole extra person!

I don't like her.

She has to go.

I started gaining weight with my second and last child - said "child" is now 26! I was 36.  He was almost ten pounds, and I had gained 50 pounds while pregnant. Looking back, I don't recall any counseling on this being not a good thing, to gain so much weight. Now I know that a child that big can indicate that the mother is on the road to developing diabetes. Which I did.

I was an Army cook for 22 years, retiring in 1996. I floundered around, looking for my next career. I tried to use my degree in Occupational Education, with a concentration in food service, to teach Culinary Arts at the local vocational school. I taught it for six months as a "permanent substitute", and had great fun with the kids. But when I applied for the actual job, I was told I had to have a degree in Home Economics.  They hired a tenured middle school Home Ec teacher.

I learned to drive an 18 wheeler.

I drove for about 15 years, sometimes with my husband, and homeschooled our youngest for three years. Came off the road and drove a bus for a retirement village for three years in the middle.

Finally I knew I needed to come off the road. My health was poor, and I just didn't want to die out there. 

So here I am, no pretenses. This is not some, "I lost a hundred pounds and you can too!" blog. If you want to, you can see my daily struggles with learning to eat healthy. Join me, too.

One of my friends did a blog like this, and she named hers "Getting to Real".

I like that.