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Introduction Text I'm now 62, widowed and in a long term relationship. I'm a mother of four adult children. Two of my sons have Autism. One still lives with us. I'm a retired nurse. I need to start over. Again. And again. It's been a struggle. I've been away so long and I've missed the support here, very much. Thanks to all of you who kept in touch. I have appreciated you more than you could ever realize. Last three years have been a series of surgeries and complications ad nauseum. I've been on bedrest most of the time and my muscles are mush, despite trying to at least still use resistance bands a bit while in bed, when able. Naturally I've gained even more weight with inactivity, and at my age it's just going to be harder. I continue to fight off other health issues, that seem to be in my way. I have not kept up with either diet or exercise. The gastritis is causing problems with diet, and the exercise is not happening often with the infections that keep recurring. The latter really fog my brain, now that I'm older, and I'm in constant pain from several problems. I just had another birthday. I have to admit that old age is cerainly not for sissies! Still have chronic gastritis, and I am not sure how to even eat healthy foods anymore, since so many of my dependable diet foods are now verboten. I've been surviving on far too many potatoes and rice, and other high glycemic foods, because they seem to stay down better. I've gained it all back because those make me hungry too soon after eating. My blood sugar rebounds. I've been changing how I eat for the last several years. I have found that I cannot eat wheat or any gluten products, so no bread, cakes, brownies, cookies, pizza dough. Not unless I make it myself anyway, and it doesn't usually taste the same, so I've gotten used to that, and it doesn't bother me anymore. What does bother me is that I can't eat a lot of things without just getting sick, and I am chronically nauseated. Sometimes I have difficulty telling if I am hungry or sick and I tend to eat when I am feeling nauseated because it settles things, for a while, due to the gastritis. Anyone else wouldn't eat at all, but I'm kind of conditioned to eat at the wrong times. I need to retrain myself. Now I'm not only GF, I've cut out grains entirely, and the weight is slowly beginning to drop. I don't think I tolerate grains very well. Even rice. After reading that most American rice is contaminated with GMO genes, that may explain why it also makes me feel sick. (If you haven't guessed, I'm vehemently Anti-Monsanto, and have been for decades). I'm learning to eat clean. Not that I'm a stranger to it, since my son's neurologist told me to not allow any FDA food colorings, (which are petroleum based), Nutrasweet or MSG 16 years ago. That made a huge difference in my shopping and I started having to cook everything from scratch, and reading all labels, anyway. In the past five years, I've also been eliminating sugar, artificial sweeteners, HFCS, and trans fats from our house. We've been using Stevia for at least 16 years, now, and I've gone pretty much exclusively to using that for the last two years. I have gastric problems that are now chronic, probably mostly from my prolonged intolerance of wheat. Because of that I have to be very cautious of what I am eating. I also found that, because of these and the medications used to control them, most of the problems that I have had for the past several years are from malnutrition. I need certain vitamins and CoQ10, so I've spent a lot of time researching these and I now take a lot of supplements that help with the pain a great deal. I think they're also keeping me alive. Two weeks ago, my boyfriend consented to try eliminating grains from the house. Entirely. His, too. And he's a grain addict. This gives me control over what my son eats, too, because he's a grazer and since the surgeries he's ballooned to 320 lbs, and that scares me. So he's on this path with me, like it or not, and just not having things available for him to raid is probably the best path. I just keep out lots of fresh veggies and fat free yogurt for him to snack on. He's losing, too! But my boyfriend is the biggest surprise. He lost 17 lbs just the first week, on no breads, no cereals, no grains of any kind. And we feel so much better. It's not even low carb because we are eating plenty of fruit and even some veggies occasionally that are high GI index, like potatoes. We have sweet potatoes. We have grapes and melons and corn and beans. We're not hurting for food at all. I did cut full fat dairy, too. We drink 1% milk. We do eat small amounts of low fat and fat free cheeses, including Laughing Cow, which my son loves on celery. Not everything is organic, yet. I'm working on that. I'm able to do some gardening this year. I hope I can continue. It's something I think is important for our health, and for the exercise. I was so ill right through April, and did not think I would ever be able to garden again, but it ended up I had yet another infection going on. That finally cleared up and I'm feeling much better and putting in some work, even though I'm not supposed to be lifting much, yet. This is not just a way to lose weight. It is a way to gain health. This time, I'm not going to be posting very often. I will drop in when I weigh and sometimes I'll check in, but I found that I end up sitting too much on the computer, because you are all such lovely, wonderful people. I would love to catch up with everyone but I get caught up and I can't sit that long. It's really not good for my vascular problems. I do better with my leg in the air when others would usually sit. So I'm trying to do that. Rededicating myself... yet again! Learning to take care of myself and those I love in 2013!

Improved health and weight loss. BTW, the ticker is just because goal #1 is now to lose what I have gained since surgery. Just taking baby steps, here. Breaking things down into managable goals.

Using the nutritional page and logging in everything I eat. I need to use the exercise program as much as possible, too. I'm trying to utilize McKenna methods as well as tapping and visualization to help me attain my goals.

I'm interested in alternative medicine, beads, jewelry making, wire wrapping, crystals, animals of all kinds, reading, arts, crafts, House MD, Heroes, Dexter, Gray's Anatomy, and so many other things...

The Power of Positive Thinking! I love Mottos/Quotations/Affirmations: Being fat is hard. Losing weight is hard. Maintaining weight is hard. Choose your hard. (Meredith from the 100-plus club)

Add a Link Thanksgiving was never meant to be shut up in a single day. ~ Robert C. Lintner But a thankful heart hath a continual feast. ~ W. J. Cameron ""Things can be gotten used to. I lost 176lbs moving mindsets of what I think tastes nice." -REDSHOES2011 I will not wait to have a good day. I will make one.
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