My maternal grandfather was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes at a young age and was insulin dependent from my earliest childhood memories. My siblings and I were fascinated with the little glass bottles that lined the refrigerator shelves and never realized how delicately they held his life in their tiny containers. Realizing his mortality, he and my grandmother adopted what at the time was considered a healthy diabetic diet and started enjoying an active lifestyle. Sadly, their new health plan was short lived and his young and vibrant life was cut short before he ever reached 60 due to colon cancer. My grandmother continued to thrive on healthy fruits and vegetables, hard boiled eggs, lean meats, and being physically active by swimming at the Y and joining a competitive senior bowling league. Grandmama was a tiny, healthy, busy bee until breast cancer took her at the ripe old age of 84. Her motto was “I eat as much as I want but I skip the pies and the cakes, the chips and the dips”. My sister and I still laugh when we remember her little rants about fruit, but maybe just maybe she was right…
Fast forward 30 years and my parents start this inevitable aging process. My father comes from a long line of heart disease and men who don’t make it past 60. He had been a traveling salesman and business entrepreneur for over 50 years, traveling more than resting, eating high fat and sodium meals, and a social drinking habit that continued way past happy hour. Despite his best efforts to hide it he landed in the hospital with me as his medical power of attorney. I think he always thought I would use that power to pull the plug some day when he nodded towards the cord on his deathbed. Instead, I used it to find out what was really going on. He had stage 4 renal failure…all the hard living had finally taken its toll and he had some big changes coming. Dialysis, a major diet change, fluid restrictions…life was never going to be the same. Of all the big changes, all the doctors, all the hospital visits the most simple thing he would not embrace was the dietitian’s request to add more protein each day. She said “just an egg. One egg a day is the easiest way to get the extra protein you are going to need if you are going to survive this”. Of course there were lots of other things but an egg?
Cue my Accountabilibuddy Karen. We had tried Weight Watchers several times before but kids, jobs, life in general kept getting in our way. Weight losses. Weight gains. I had given up. Karen was getting ready to turn the big 50 though and I wasn’t far behind her. With a father facing dialysis and a history of diabetes in the family I knew I had to do something but I just didn’t have the time or energy. Karen urged me to go one more time. We love our leader, we need to do “something”. I went, we actually listened this time and shocker…we tracked. We really tracked. Not this play around “I’ll count when I do well and pretend it doesn’t exist” when I don’t. More as we travel this journey, but let’s just say 42 pounds for me and 32 and counting for Karen, we are on our way! Won’t you come along too?
