No Catchy Title Here

Every time I start a post the form directs the user to add a catchy title. But as you can see, I have no catchy title today, only sad memories from June 2018, and a warning bell. One of the saddest things I learned this week is that one of my lifelong friends is back in the nursing home permanently. She is not yet 60 years old but she can no longer walk or take care of herself without extreme difficulty. Dee was always a really good woman with a big heart and a talent for working magic with flloral arrangements. She was always a bit on the large size, but these last 5-10 years she ballooned up to an unrecognizable weight of 431 lbs. She comes from a big loving family, which was full of love but short on any kind of nutritional training or compulsion to exercise, so when the sibs started to get on her about losing weight she just blew them off. Finally about a year ago, diabetes reared its ugly inevitable head along with its complications including extreme difficulty walking so she finally decided to lose weight, which she did--over 100 lbs! Unfortunately it was too late. The organs were damaged, and chronic immobility rendered her married to her recliner where she became so lazy that she started to soil herself rather than walk to the bathroom 12 ft away. They put her back in the hospital and rehabbed her to the point of being able to return home, but she just gave up and would continue to soil herself, now right in front of people rather than get up. When her family lost their tempers and told her to buck up she dug in, so they finally shipped her back to the nursing home permanently. I am sharing this pain with you to point out that it is just as important to exercise as it is to lose weight especially as we age because it's not necessarily the weight that's your enemy but whether or not it renders you couch-bound, which can actually be the bigger danger. Quantity of life isn't nearly as important as the quality of that life, and I for one don't want to live the rest of my life glued to a recliner watching reruns of bad tv. Follow up: My friend died less than a year after giving up on herself. Her amazing talent for flower arranging will be missed but not as much as her warm and generous spirit.