About this site
My name is Erika and I am absolutely, hopelessly, and irretrievably in love with food. When life kicks me in the teeth, food is my first refuge and my last resort. My first thought in any emotional situation is “Where can I get some ice cream? I’m hungry!” And this blog is my serious attempt to try and reign in that impulse so that I can lose weight - but more importantly so I can get healthy.
I decided to finally “go through with it” and really diet seriously after my father’s sudden death in November. Not to harp on a sad time in my life, but sometimes you get a wake up call, and this was mine. My dad was a wonderful, intelligent and (I thought) healthy guy. Oh sure, he was diabetic and liked to sneak a donut here and there, but so what, right? I mean, he walked two or three miles a day and was always active. And he was only 68 - that isn’t old, not yet, he has plenty of time to get things squared away. It doesn’t matter that much, right?
Except that it did matter. Turns out that we were more alike than I’d ever thought. While giving lip service to health, he hadn’t followed up on numerous warnings from his doctor. He’d recently been putting the weight back on. His doctor suspected prostate cancer, but Dad simply filed the letters away and kept on keeping on, ignoring any warning signs. Like the headaches that, according to my mom, were incapacitating him every few days. High blood pressure was also on the scene. And I knew none of this until the day I got the phone call from my brother, saying “Erika, you have to come home - it’s dad. He’s cold. He’s not moving and I don’t know what to do…”
How could he do this to us? And on the heels of that - how could I do that to people I loved? Suddenly it wasn’t about me any more, about how I deserved that piece of chocolate cake or those extra french fries. It’s about me loving my family and not doing this to them. So if you’re like me… if you keep saying “Sure I should go get that test - I should lose a couple pounds - I should exercise more, but I have time. I’m young. It doesn’t matter.”, then let this site be your wake up call too.
I will get healthy and I will live to be 87 like my grandfather did. I hope you do too.
