Mother's Day Celebration

We participated in a wonderful celebration for all the women who are mothers in one of our elderly communities today. If you can believe this, they actually kicked off the day with a class on diabetes taught by none other than me! And...the class was on nutrition! Imagine talking about what you should eat on a day when there was more food around than you could shake a stick at! None the less, of the 100 or so residents who attended the celebration, we had 25 attend the diabetes class. We talked a lot about carbohydrates, portion sizes, meal planning. There were many questions. Thankfully, this class was in the morning and the residents were fresh, awake and interested in learning. Much better than the time slot after lunch when all are fed, full and sleepy!
Now, since it was a special occasion, I took the liberty of baking two angel food pineapple cakes which is a Weight Watcher's recipe. Cutting them into 24 two inch squares made them about 20 grams of carbohydrates.
One elderly lady ate her piece and declared that it was indeed the best cake she ever had. She was soooo pleased that she asked for a second helping. Perhaps it was all of the compliments, or maybe that I know they don't get treats often, or maybe because it was Mother's Day, I gave her a second piece. But before another ten minutes went by, she asked if she could have a third piece. I grinned and carefully reminded her, "Remember what we just talked about in class today?" So she left without her extra portion. But outside where all the festivities were taking place I overheard her say, "I sure hope they have something sweet for desert!" And at the close of the program, I saw her take two more pieces of cake and put them down in her bag. So much for my teaching today.
No matter who we are and no matter what health issues we have, it is not necessarily the easiest thing to always do what is right for our health. But you know what? We should continue to try. I will continue to get up and go out and teach ways to take care of diabetes, the nutrition guidelines and the portion sizes. I will teach about monitoring and exercise. And I hope that as I do this, there will be people, who just like this little lady, might not do it right everyday, but will get up and go out and try to do it right one more time. Taking care of ourselves is a daily decision made moment to moment of each and every day. Doesn't matter if it is diabetes, or hypertension, or just trying to stay healthy...we need to keep on trying to do it right.