~and we will keep you posted~

The cupboards at our house are fixing to look different by next week this time.  The pantry shelves will soon be stocked with a different kind of fare, one void of the many lovely and most delicious of things that Mike and I both really enjoy eating and drinking.  Gone from the refrigerator will be the sports drinks, diet sodas, chocolate candy bars, and dairy items that are high in fat and sugar as well.

For everything there is a reason.
At least that's what they say.

Mike learned that his sugar level was too high at his most recent doctor appointment and he was scheduled to visit with a nutritionist next Monday in order to lay out a balanced diet to bring the level down to a more reasonable number. Although my own sugar level is holding steady in the safe range, my intention is to join Mike as he begins the quest to eat a more sound and safe diet of food.  Diabetes runs in both of our families and that proverbial "handwriting on the wall" has been there since the day of our births.

It will probably only be a matter of time for me anyways before my fate will be the same.  Why not get a head start on it?  Makes good sense to me.

All of our lives, we have grown up around good food and plenty of it.  Both sets of our parents were excellent cooks and thankfully I can say that neither of us has ever known what real hunger feels like.  As a kid being raised up on a farm, our table was always laden with good food made with ingredients that were found as close as the backyard garden or dairy barn.  Looking back, I remember being a part of a generation of children raised to clean up every scrap of food upon their plates.  

Nutrition wasn't wasted.  
Not even one morsel.

Both of us tend to be stress eaters, snackers all evening long if we choose to.  There has always been a box of snack crackers or microwave popcorn to munch upon.  Our favorite hangout in town serves up yummy ice cream cones all year long, nearly 24/7 if you needed it.  When a person doesn't really think about it or has other intensely more stressful things on their minds to consider, it's easy to take in an extra 500 calories each evening.

Our days of doing that are soon to be in the past.

The older I have become, the more I realize just how important it is to take care of yourself.  It's important to eat nutritionally, to get plenty of rest and sleep, to visit your doctor and take the medicine that has been prescribed for you.  Better yet would be to not have to take any medications at all.  Hobbies and pastimes are great for the mind and the spirit.  All of those are things that both of us need to work on, especially me.  

And so we shall.

Our healthy bodies and minds are important things to consider.  Both of us wish to live long and to live well.  It will be quite a nutritional journey ahead for both Mike and I. 
We will keep you posted!   

We went back on our 3 month anniversary in 2013 to stand underneath the basketball goal in the gymnasium we got married in.  4 years have passed by and we are still together through good times and the not so good ones.  Life goes on.

(back home in Hutchinson, Kansas at Lincoln Elementary School)