Don't Go Breaking My Heart

Last week, I really meant to try to get back to a semi-regular posting routine. Between getting ready for the big birthday party, trying to get a conference proposal ready, and some other miscellaneous crappola, it didn’t happen. Looking ahead, since I anticipate leaving for Texas again at the end of the week, give or take, being there for a couple of weeks in order to pack up the house and remove its contents, attend a hearing on my father’s estate, etc., etc., it looks like it could be towards the end of the month before I’m really present again.

I’m here today though, and delighted to report that I had a spectacular birthday! Friday night, we had a soiree at the VFW of which one of our friends is a member and graciously hooked us up with a big room complete with pool tables and a bar with a bartender and super-cheap drinks. We had tons of food, of course – sandwiches from my favorite sandwich place, coleslaw I made, and lots of side dishes and finger foods that my friends brought like spinach dip, macaroni salad, wings, a veggie tray, and the like.

RAWR!! cake

I had been to one of the renowned area bakeries a couple of days earlier to order not just one, but two glorious cakes – a quarter sheet cake that was half chocolate and half vanilla, and a round chocolate layer cake with banana cream filling and chocolate whipped cream frosting. This is a summary of the exchange I had with the man at the bakery who took my order:

Baker: What do you want the writing to say?
Me: Happy Birthday Lee Ann
Baker: So you want girl colors?
Me: Well, I was wondering if you could do snakes and lizards?

The baker raised an eyebrow, and looked up at me from his order form with a suspicious expression.

Baker: We don’t do intricate icing decorations.

It was something about the kind of icing they use. So no fancy icing art, but they have a ridiculous selection of plastic toy decorations, and he thought they had some decorative toy reptiles. My face lit up when he mentioned this, so the baker proceeded to sift through a series of drawers for the decorations in question. After a brief search, he came back.

Baker: That’s more of a summer item in a package with bugs, so we don’t have it.

Bugs? Why would anyone ruin beautiful reptiles with icky, crunchy bugs? I wear my heart on my sleeve, and my disappointment must have been apparent.

Baker: What else would she like?

I sheepishly admitted that “she” was me, and got another raised eyebrow. I scanned the wall of decorations before I was struck by the oh-so-obvious compromise.

Me: What about dinosaurs??
Baker: Yes, we can do that.

So dinosaurs it was! I’ve had a thing for dinosaurs since I was in maybe 1st grade. I would have preferred snakes and lizards, but dinosaurs were a cool second best option.

Jason and I… well, mostly Jason had worked tirelessly to prepare karaoke for the party. The details would bore you, but we had multiple issues trying to put something together, mostly technical issues. He thought he’d unsnagged all the snags since it had worked fine with our TV, speakers, mics, and laptops at home, but the final snag occurred at the VFW, and was without a resolution despite Jason’s efforts. We had to work around the snafu, but overall, the karaoke went well and offered too many hilarious moments to count. (This is the part where I give mad props to my hubby.)

The Birthday Girl

So great fun was had, much food was eaten, the cake was scrumptious, the candles were many as were the jokes about setting fire to the VFW, the drinks were cold, my tiara was sparkly, the company was fabulous, the entertainment was memorable for sure, and it was an awesome party.

Saturday, initially, I wasn’t going to do anything. Many of our friends were going to a seafood restaurant Saturday night, but Jason doesn’t like seafood, so we hadn’t gotten on board (see what I did there?). I knew that one of the attendees wasn’t feeling well though. Jason, tired from the party, wanted to stay home and play Star Trek, so he encouraged me to see if I could still go. An email and a couple of phone calls later, and I had a reserved seat and a ride to the dinner.

The food was delicious. It was a big group of us, and we were seated in smaller groups at several tables. Those of us at the table where I sat shared a basket of corn nuggets, little balls of creamed corn, battered and deep-fried. They were pure decadent evil in the best way. Then I had buffalo garlic scallops, also sinfully delicious. As is my M.O., especially after such indulgent appetizers, I ate half my entrée, and brought the rest home in a doggie bag – broiled scallops and shrimp, a crab cake, onion rings, and homemade macaroni and cheese. Oh, and I’d be remiss to exclude the chocolate cake I shared with my buddy, Allison. It was all very carb-erific, and I underbolused (darn you, breading!) so I had a BG spike with which to contend, but I managed to reign that in within a couple of hours. Battered deep-fried anything presents a BG management challenge, but I like to think I’m up for that tete-a-tete every now and again.

Sunday, which was actually my birthday, I decided that brunch and a movie was my celebration of choice. I could tell Jason would have been perfectly happy sitting on the sofa all day, so a low-key outing seemed a fair compromise. One of my favorite eateries for breakfast food is Honey’s Sit & Eat. Supposedly Honey’s serves mutant Jewish and Southern cuisine ripe with farm-fresh organic ingredients. I don’t see a lot of Jewish influence, but then I’m partial to ordering menu items that are of a Southern ilk. Since Northern Liberties, the Philadelphia neighborhood where Honey’s is located, is a popular habitation for 20-something artsy-fartsy folks, there is never a shortage of them at Honey’s. Having been one of these 20-something artsy-fartsy folks an increasing number of years ago, being there does elicit memories of times past and a certain bittersweet feeling of loss, but the atmosphere is good and the food is mouth-watering. Jason ordered the Breakfast Bomb, a giant pancake filled with eggs and his breakfast meat of choice, which was bacon, needless to say, and a side of home fries. I opted for my usual: the chorizo, jalapeno, tomato, cheddar omelet with a side of grits and a homemade buttermilk biscuit. It. Was. Fabulous.

We crossed the bridge back into New Jersey, and headed towards the movie theater to see Edge of Darkness. We had some time to kill though so we stopped at Target. I snapped a picture of the Ding Dong shirt for Kerri because she and I had a conversation about Ding Dongs during our drive to Chicago last summer that still makes me giggle. I also snapped a picture of Happy Birthday Barbie, which I now regret not buying. I’m toying (see what I did there?) with the idea of returning to buy her even though it’s a little late to don the birthday tiara included with her.

Edge of Darkness was entertaining, although the plot was convoluted and I couldn’t quite figure out who some of the characters were in relation to the plot. We weren’t terribly excited about any of the movie options, so it wasn’t that we were dying to see it, but more that we were less keen on spending money to see the other films. Diet soda aficionado that I am, I do have to complain that $5.75 for a large soda left me shaking my head in utter dismay. Note to self, plan ahead and smuggle beverages into the theater next time.

Overall, I had a great birthday. Many thanks to all who sent cards, messages, e-cards, and posted birthday wishes on Facebook. My aunt even sent me some beautiful tulips, a reminder that spring and the new beginnings I sorely need are right around the corner.

Honey's Sit & Eat

The Breakfast Bomb

Southern-Inspired Breakfast for a Southern Girl

For Kerri

The Perfect Gift for a 37-Yead Old

Spring Tulips for the Birthday Girl

Despite the deafening silence around here, most days I sit and try to write something. I consistently end up with a few paragraphs of word vomit though. I habitually leave my laptop on for the day, sometimes for days on end – please don’t tell the green people because I know this means I fail at energy conservation. The paragraphs might sit for a few hours to as long as a couple of days before I return to them, give them a re-read, and delete them. It’s called word vomit for a good reason after all. I really want to return to blogging. I want to say something about something, but what?

I can tell you I’ve been sick for almost a month. I spent a couple of those weeks on the sofa watching documentaries on everything from dinosaurs to a black dude who traced his family history back to when his family was slaves. Of greatest interest to the diabetes community were the ones I watched on the obesity epidemic and the American food industry. You’d think I’d have a post or two to write about that, but so far nothing has materialized. I watched a disproportionate number of documentaries about World War II which is neither here nor there to you, but I’m telling you anyway.

Ordinarily, I never turn on the TV during the days when I’m home. Jason and I have shows that we like to watch together, and that’s really the only time I watch TV, so the documentary-watching binge is exceptionally peculiar. It’s the only thing for which I had any energy after the incessant coughing and the meticulously constructed mountain of green snot-filled tissues I made.

Somewhere in the midst of that, I also went to Texas for a week, as you likely surmised if you caught the lame filler post with my pictures of the freak East Texas snow storm. While the purpose of my trip was to begin to sort through my father’s belongings, which incited one especially painful meltdown, but otherwise, I took in stride all things considered, I was still happy to be with my Granny and my aunts. Mind you, it’s my hope that I can make the next trip without having to eat cold medicine like it’s candy and drink cough syrup like it’s Diet Coke because I didn’t care for the haze that induced.

Once home from Texas, it had become clear to me that the non-prescription medications weren’t doing much for me, so I finally took myself to the doctor. Having been on antibiotics and codeine-infused cough syrup for the last week, my symptoms are finally improving. So that’s something.

As if that weren’t enough to put an emphatic eff in February, a month that typically agrees with me much more favorably than it has this year, the first week of the month greeted me with not just one, but two glorious incidents of severe hypoglycemia requiring glucagon. Both incidents were marked by what have become the hallmarks of my nocturnal hypoglycemic events. Moaning and thrashing that woke up Jason. Semi-responsiveness that deteriorated to unresponsiveness. Sheets and a mattress pad so drenched in sweat you’d think I’d peed on them. Jason’s sadly confident decision that the time to bust out the red glucagon kit had arrived. My eventual emergence into consciousness marked by a dazed, “What happened?” Me, frozen to the bone, shivering uncontrollably, teeth-chattering, and surely on the verge of hypothermia. The only difference between the two incidents was the first one was punctuated by a 20mg/dL, while the one five days later was marked by a milder 25mg/dL. And thankfully, Jason was able to bypass calling 911 because the juice he poured down my throat before I became unresponsive combined with the glucagon did the trick. I reckon that qualifies as some kind of silver lining, right?

So February has been a bitch of the royal PIA variety. And that’s after January left me flat on my ass with the wind knocked clear out of me. On the upside, my birthday is in a few days, which really is a good thing as long as I don’t dwell on the fact that I’m a year older which scares the crap out of me since this diabetes thing was surely going to take me before I hit 30, but has now graciously let me tiptoe another year closer to 40. As I said though, I’m not going to think about that. Since my parents won’t be around the next few days, they took Jason and I out to one of my favorite restaurants last week, and we had a lovely dinner. After the last few weeks, there are not words to describe how happy and relieved I was to see my mom and dad. That was good.

On Friday evening, I am throwing a birthday party for myself with the generous help of Jason and my friends. If anyone in the general geographic region has any interest in attending, please let me know, and I will forward the specifics to you. I will drink diet soda, and eat cake, and sing karaoke, and be happy. Supposedly, it’s not good luck to share one’s birthday wish, but it probably goes without saying that mine will involve a serious reversal of fortune. I’m also hoping the birthday fairy can deliver some blogging inspiration because I’m struggling to get back on track here.

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?

I went to the BlogHer Conference which also sent me to Chicago for the first time. I also attended my first American Art Therapy Association Conference.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I may not always succeed, but every day I want to be a better person, no matter what day or holiday or year it is. For more insight into my thoughts on New Year’s resolutions, check yesterday’s post.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

I kind of lose track because everyone in my age bracket seems to be making babies, but no one really close that I can recall.

My Dear Smeagol

4. Did anyone close to you die?

My Nan, and my beloved lizard, Smeagol.

5. What countries did you visit?

I didn’t leave the country.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

I’d like to have an art therapy business that’s flourishing, and I‘d like some decent, affordable health insurance. Of course, since I’m pursuing the self-employment route, I’m not really sure how or if I can get the insurance. It’s an unfortunate conundrum.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Smeagol died July 12th. It still makes me cry. I want nothing more than to turn back time, and come back from Texas one day sooner so I can take him to his vet instead of the University of Pennsylvania Vet Hospital who charged us $200-something to tell us they didn’t have any reptile specialists on staff late at night even though I called to ask if they could help Smeagol before we even took him there, and then sent him home to die in my arms. It makes my heart hurt.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Well, had I filled this out yesterday prior to checking the mail, I might have said getting my Art Therapist Registration (ATR), but passing my board certification exam trumps that now.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Not having any of the job prospects for which I was most excited translate into an actual job.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

I don’t know if it counts, but having the paramedics at my house responding to severe lows, and having Jason injecting glucagon in me a few times were incidents I could have done without.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

My laptop.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Jason. He saved me 2 or 3 times this past year, on top of the fact that he already puts up with my chronic disorganization and terrible housekeeping skills.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

The US government’s handling of health care reform, and the blatant disregard that so many Americans have for people who need health insurance. Appalled, depressed, and generally disgusted with humanity is only the tip of the iceberg.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Besides the mortgage, which is the case year after year, I’d have to say COBRA.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Umm, I’m board-certified, biotches!

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?

I don’t really buy too much new music anymore because I’m old and I’m perfectly happy listening to music from the 80’s and early 90’s, so nothing really comes to mind.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?

a) Happier because now that I’m board-certified, I can get my LPC (licensed professional counselor) credential in Pennsylvania, and my career options should improve.
b) Obviously, I didn’t write this meme because I never would have included such a question.
c) Richer because I’m still getting unemployment for now, although that isn’t going to last for much longer so hopefully my private practice will start to show signs of life.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Exercised and gotten semi-organized.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

I feel like I should spend less time social networking because other things are being neglected. I haven’t figured out how to best manage those activities with other activities and obligations.

20. Did you fall in love in 2008?

I love Jason so that counts I think.

23. What was your favorite TV program?

Dexter, totally. I hate the blood and killing, which I know sounds ridiculous since it’s a show about a serial killer. We can’t watch it too close to bedtime because if we do, my nightmares are more vivid, but the show is so good that I tolerate the mental agony it causes me.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Lately, I’ve been hating our political system and society, but that probably doesn’t qualify.

Health Care Reform

25. What was the best book you read?

I don’t think I read a whole book. I started reading several books, all non-fiction. In order to study for the board certification exam, I read a good part of Handbook of Art Therapy by Cathy Malchiodi. I thought it was a great overview of the practice.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

I had tried Pandora a couple of years ago, and re-visited recently, but feel very meh about it. After trying blip.fm, I just don’t quite get it. Someone on twitter told me about last.fm though, and I’m digging that.

27. What did you want and get?

I wanted to pass my board certification exam. And I did.

28. What did you want and not get?

A job with awesome health benefits.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?

I thought The Soloist was really good. Having worked with quite a few schizophrenic patients during my career, Jamie Foxx’s performance was very impressive.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I was 36, and I had a fabulous birthday. Allison & Wayne had a fondue party that coincided with my birthday, and Amy made homemade cupcakes complete with sugar-free frosting. There was singing, everyone politely tolerated my birthday tiara, and I had a grand time.

31. What was one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Health benefits.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?

I’m quite sure I don’t have a personal fashion concept.

33. What kept you sane?

Jason. No doubt. Always.

Blogging, social networking, and my ever-increasing circle of diabetes friends would be a close second though.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I do loves me some Nathan Fillion.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?

I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, which probably got better health care before dying than a good many Americans, but that would be health care reform.

36. Who did you miss?

Since he died, it’s been Smeagol.

37. Who was the best new person you met?

No way can I pick one person since I met so many – Scotty J., George, Crystal, Kerri, Cherise, Suzanne, Jaimie… I know I’m forgetting people, so that’s just a sampling of everyone I was thrilled to meet. I was pretty stoked to meet Bobby Clarke too.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.

Believe in your goals and pursue them. Also, having lots of friends who believe in you can carry you when you forget to believe in yourself.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

It almost goes without saying, doesn’t it? “Don’t stop believin’”

Tuesday night, after Jason asked me what I felt like watching, and I told him I didn’t care, he opted to put on the most recent Rambo movie that TiVo had captured for him to watch at his leisure. For future reference, “I don’t care” will not be my response next time. While I was barely watching, I managed to catch heads rolling, blood pouring, and dead bodies hanging, but even with my eyes purposely averted, just the screams of horror, and the swish-swish of long scary knives decapitating and otherwise killing people had me squirming and hoping I wouldn’t be the star in my own Southeast Asian guerilla warfare nightmare later that night.

Coincidentally, a little later, AMC was showing the original Rambo movie, First Blood, which I had never seen. I only half watched, mostly to comment on the bad acting and absurd plot premise. It was not anywhere near as gruesome as its more recent version, so at least I was spared additional cinematic gore. We were not however spared the agony of a crazy amount of commercial breaks. Sometimes we’ll watch a movie on AMC, and it’s hard to overlook that they have more commercial breaks than you can imagine, but Tuesday night, it seemed worse than ever. I didn’t actually time it, but I’d be surprised if more than 10 minutes of the movie played at any given time before there was a commercial interruption. What made it even more annoying was that it was the same commercials over and over again, one of which was for Nutrisystem D.

I’ve already grown weary of weight loss program commercials appealing to those who resolve to lose weight once and for all in 2010, but if I have to see this Nutisystem D commercial one more time, I’ll scream. Initially, the commercial didn’t register with me, even though the onslaught of commercial breaks are also twice as loud as the movie (I kid you not, watch AMC and see for yourself), but by the 4th or 5th time it aired, I started to take notice. A diet plan for people with T2 diabetes that will supposedly help them lose weight and lower their A1c?

I looked on the website. From the Nutrisystem homepage: “Lose weight & help manage the ABCs of diabetes – A1C/Blood Sugar levels, Blood Pressure, and Cholesterol.” I clicked to get more details, and on the next page, the claims were as follows:

• Lost up to 16x more weight
• Lowered blood sugar levels 5x more
• Lowered A1C by 0.9%
• Lowered total cholesterol level by 20.9 mg
• Lowered triglycerides level by 42.7 mg

I imagine anyone with T2 who is overweight and loses a significant amount of weight would have comparable results. The obvious hurdle is, of course, losing the weight, but Nutrisystem purports to facilitate overcoming that obstacle.

Then I went digging for a little more information in the form of reviews and opinions. First I found the Diet Blog, a site to which I’ve never been before so I can’t speak to its credibility. My anti-diet philosophy aside, it seemed OK overall though. They seemed to make some valid points worth noting. The Nutisystem D diet is based on a study at Temple University (my alma mater, it should be noted) School of Medicine. The sample size was small with only 68 obese participants, so no definitive conclusions should really be drawn, let alone an entire diet program developed based on them. Furthermore, and even more troubling, “The lead figure on the study, Dr Gary Foster, wrote the NutriSystem Diet’s ‘Mindset Makeover’ behavioral guide. Also, NutriSystem provided an ‘educational grant’ for the Obesity Management In Patients With Type 2 Diabetes dinner meeting at Temple University’s School of Medicine.” Can we say, “conflict of interest”, boys and girls?

My next stop was our very own Diabetes Daily where Elizabeth Edelman did an impressive and comprehensive review which you should totally check out to get more details and insight into this diet. One thing she noted was the obscene amount of sodium in the packaged meals. Sodium is bad for diabetics, and while it’s especially dangerous and needs to be watched by those of us with blood pressure, heart and/or kidney-related problems, if you want to take steps towards avoiding those health issues, you’d likely be doing yourself a favor to keep an eye on your sodium intake. What struck me was the first quote I lifted from the Nutrisystem homepage that the diet would help with the ABC’s of diabetes including blood pressure – yet the food is loaded with sodium? I guess what they strategically omitted was that their packaged meals are more likely to raise your blood pressure, not lower it.

Elizabeth also noted that the diet doesn’t teach participants how to eat once their supply of packaged meals is depleted. This is the problem with just about every diet that exists though, and that brings me to the true take-away message I want to impart.

I don’t believe in weight loss diets, so my bias in that respect should be noted. I believe in eating a wide range of foods, heavy on whole grains, produce and low-fat protein, light on processed foods, all in moderation – well, except for diet soda (it’s my vice, so sue me). It’s vague I guess, but after spending half my life in a tete-a-tete with food, I made peace with food and this works beautifully for me. I’m sure there are a few sporadic souls out there somewhere for whom a weight loss diet has worked to the point that they were able to reach their goal weight and maintain their weight loss, but for the vast majority of people, that isn’t what happens. So what good are weight loss diets? Well, they might help you lose weight for a time, but they are by their very nature nearly impossible to maintain forever so the weight inevitably returns. Weight loss diets make the people who write the books about them, and the people who run the weight loss program companies fat… in the pocketbook sense, of course. It’s a billion dollar industry because people keep feeding it, pun intended.

I know, I know, if you’ve met me or seen enough photos of me, you’re asking who the heck am I to talk about weight loss diets? I’m not fat. I’ve never been fat. I was slightly overweight when I was 14 after eating myself into oblivion one summer to alleviate what I now recognize as depression. My obsession to lose those 20 or so pounds resulted in an 18-year eating disorder, diabetes complications, and all the accompanied fallout. So my food and body issues aren’t the same as someone who’s obese, but if I hadn’t hobbled along with my compensatory behaviors – insulin omission and self-induced vomiting – for the better part of two decades, I can assure you, I’d be as big as a house with an attached 3 car garage and an in-law suite. I’ve despised my body. I’ve been engaged in obsessive power struggles with myself about whether or not to eat something. I’ve felt deprived. I’ve felt completely out of control with my eating. My end result was different from someone who’s overweight, but I think my struggle was comparably miserable, and achieving balance and making peace with food and my body, no less monumental.

My weight is now healthy and stable. Thus, I have no reason to consider weight loss as a New Year’s resolution. There are plenty of things I should consider – exercising and cleaning my house would be good starts – but in the end, I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. The very concept of getting motivated to do something that’s likely been an ongoing problem for an extended amount of time, in January of all the cold, dark, depressing months of the year, just because you have to get used to writing a new number on your checks seems inately ludicrous to me.

Yesterday I saw this post, “New Year’s resolutions – no more!”, written by Doris Smeltzer on Eating Disorders Blogs: Advice for Parents, and tweeted by @gurzebooks, a publisher of books about eating disorders. I encourage you to read the post, but in brief, Ms. Smeltzer spent years making resolutions to lose weight. The time came when she found the key to achieving the number on the scale she had so longed to see – chemo to treat breast cancer. She swore off diets after that, but whatever messages had been conveyed to her daughters about loving – or in this case, hating – one’s body were learned. One of her daughters eventually died from an eating disorder. I’m sure that isn’t the sole reason her daughter developed an eating disorder because an eating disorder is a very complex mental illness. However, I suspect, just as Ms. Smeltzer does, that her daughter garnered some very negative messages about her body by watching what many would say is typical behavior – a New Year’s resolution to lose weight. You want to lose a few pounds, maybe you ate too many Christmas cookies, maybe you haven’t lost the baby weight, maybe your genes just don’t agree with you being a size 6 or wearing a size 34 waist, so New Years rolls around, and you decide you’re finally going to lose those pesky pounds by going on a diet.

Ms. Smeltzer, who no longer diets and whose daughter is dead, quoted the spring 1991 issue of Radiance Magazine:

In 1990 Congress investigated hazards and misrepresentations of the diet industry. C. Wayne Calloway, M.D. practices endocrinology in Washington, DC and has held prominent positions with the Mayo Clinic, university medical centers, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health. He testified, “The great mythology is that the diet works and that you have failed. Most likely, the act of dieting itself leads to the compulsion to eat. Bingeing is a normal consequence of starving.” (p. 15)

So should you just say screw it? Well, no, not if it’s in the interest of your health to lose weight. I don’t claim to have the secrets to weight loss, and I do think that achieving weight loss is a very individual thing – much like diabetes management. I’ve never had to lose a lot of weight and then maintain it, but if you think I don’t know about learning how to eat like a normal person so that I could maintain weight without slowly – or quickly – killing myself, then hello, I’m Lee Ann, nice to meet you, so glad you popped by today.

Luckily, as people with diabetes, it’s generally easy for us to justify meeting with a registered dietitian, and that’s what I think anyone who wants to change their eating habits should do. The people at Nutrisystem or Jenny Craig are sales people before all else, and they want to sell you the dream that you can be whatever your magic scale number is. I know some people swear by Weight Watcher’s, but if you have to keep going back and paying over and over again, I can’t help but think that they just want to make a profit off you and your desire to lose weight too. Your diabetes team, your healthcare providers are the ones who are better situated and better qualified to help you devise a plan to lose any weight that might be compromising your health. Sales people are not.

So this year, instead of deciding you need to lose 20 pounds, and then beating your poor psyche to a pulp in 6 weeks when you haven’t made whatever progress you envisioned on a diet that you know you can’t indefinitely sustain, decide you’re going to get a kitchen scale and start weighing your portions. Make a new rule that you aren’t going to eat straight from the box, bag or container. Trade your half-gallon of ice cream for single serve bars or cups. Are you going to lose that 20 pounds by doing any one of those things by itself? No, but any one of those things are good steps to take towards learning to eat a healthy, varied diet of the foods you actually like in moderation. Then, if you must make one, spend your New Year’s resolution on something fulfilling, like remembering all the things that make you awesome, no matter what the number on the tag in your pants is.

I meant to post a Merry Christmas post on Christmas, but somehow it didn’t happen. I hope you enjoyed your Christmas though. I thought I’d share a few of our highlights from Christmas morning…