Doctor's report plus national statistics yesterday get me down in the dumps about the cost of food addictions

On the whole my doctor's report on blood tests was good. My efforts to control my sugar intake as well as a pill a day of actos brought my sugar level in a fasting blood test down to a good average, 110. He said the echo gram on my heart showed some enlargement but since my blood pressure is now well controlled he does not anticipate more trouble there. He said my carotid artery tests were good, but he said the most to worry about were the arteries in my overweight legs. He had the girl do a quick test in my feet and scheduled another next week for my fat legs. I know this is an area to be concerned about as if I work too long sitting my feet swell, so I have taken to reading more in bed so I can elevate my legs.
But getting sick from my vegan diet took its toll of my walking for several months. I just did not have the strength to walk. However swimming this summer I can tell has helped and now walking is easier. He recommends I take walks as often as possible, and since I only managed to lose 2 pounds so still weigh 230 I know that how long I live without serious health problems depends on my holding my weight down and losing. I was 215 5 years ago so have put on 15 pounds while with Doc. This is all caused from fancy eating and not walking enough.
Today I saw in the USA today that it is anticipated that diabetes levels will rise in the coming year. One out of three people have it or will have it. The epidemic due to over weight has not peaked! I know how bad it is because each day I listen and read about people's struggles with it here in the complex and elsewhere. A good friend is now unable to walk hardly at all due to a bad knee and a bad hip plus overweight. She has had to have a kidney specialist because she is having trouble with them. That is very bad news to a diabetic with the possibility of dialysis looming ahead.
Diabetics zoom about in their scooters perhaps restoring to them a sense of power they once had in their bodies, but a scooter can also be deceptively alluring, so that all thought of walking is gradually given up. Another friend had to get out of hers who has gained more weight while she has had it and could barely get back in, while I was with her the other day. Her life expectancy can probably now be measured in months instead of years.
I find that I am more successful in keeping my food intake down if I eat alone rather than with Doc. He is not overweight and likes to urge me to eat all the goodies I want which he will gladly buy for me. He is incorrigible about this, so that is another reason I moved all my food stuff home and will not do meals with him. I sometimes share some soup I make or some dish I know he likes with him, but that is it.
One bright spot, now that ASU has moved their nurses program down here and the journalism school, too, I notice that most of the female students are thin as wraiths so the alarm has been getting through to them and their parents as it has to my daughter with a college student son. She has always done her best to cook healthy meals and keep her children slim and trim and active.
I know of no other answer to our obesity epidemic but that, more physical activity and less pigging out on fattening food. I know that a good many parents as well as their children use food for comfort, and if their lives are hard, ironically the fatter they might get with the opportunities so plentiful to buy fattening food.
I share that tendency for I have always turned to food for comfort. I shunned alcohol and tobacco seeing the toll it took on my father, his brothers, and my male cousins, but I grew up at a time where our good farm food was looked on as too healthy to be harmful.
Well, it is very healthy but if you take the rich cream the cows give to provide endless rich desserts, and the bin always has a 100 pounds of sugar in it for preserving many jars of jams and jellies, and a sack of white flour in another bin to make delicious bread all the time on which to slather butter and jam at least once a day, well those habits stayed with me even as all the activity required to raise gardens and keep a household going, especially without modern conveniences disappeared. Even after we got electricity it was obvious our family was going to be addicted to very rich food. The freezer was filled with fat roasts and T-Bone steaks plus pork chops, chickens. When I came home to cook I had a bounteous larder to supply me. Plus my dad never objected to paying for any ingredients that went into cooking, so we daughters always took full advantage of his generosity. So nearly all of us developed eating disorders. Three of us over weight and one sister took to bilimia so she would not have to pay the price for binging on pie, homemade candy, or whatever.
My older sons saw the examples of their dad and granddad and experimented with alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes, but my younger daughter and son did much better in that department, keeping in shape for sports and school activities.
I will tell you every addiction takes its toll. Food addiction has certainly taken its toll on my life and health.