Happy New Year! Goals anyone?

Hello--I had to clear out of every site I was on to log into this site. A pain to be sure. Anyway...
Not too much happening here at work today, after the craziness of the holiday printing schedules! It seems almost too quiet, but we do have everyone here in the office today. I wanted to touch base with all of you as it is the beginning of 2014! A NEW year. Maybe the same old goals but nevertheless a chance to start again and become a healthier me (you).

At my last health check in December my medical report was not as good as I would have likes. Glucose readings up, blood pressure up (that's what prompted me to go it was the headaches). Dr doubled my blood pressure med and put me back on daily insulin shots. I go back later in January to assess again. It was reiterated to me that I have what's called Syndrome X. A bunch of related health issues all rolled into one and they call it Syndrome X or Metabolic Syndrome. If you have a few minutes you can look it up on webmd.com So I've been warned again. If Dr Karen doesn't like the January results she is thinking of putting me on an insulin pump. I'm supposed to be checking on that with my insurance company, we just changed on Jan. 1. Anyway, after 13 years perhaps some of all this is finally starting to sink in. I MUST do something! My Dr Karen said that my health was better when I was blogging earlier in 2013 and has encouraged me (ordered me) to begin doing this again.

So, I came across the quarterly issue of Journal of Christian Nursing and a couple of articles caught my attention. The first was about Elder Abuse. Haven't read that one all the way through yet. But while looking through the magazine (before giving it to my friend Nurse Sandy, (as it did come addressed to her) I found an article called Health Ministry Partnerships. Creating a Habit for Health. I did find it quite interesting as Nurse Sandy and a nursing student did a similar health care program he at Trinity in years past. "By partnering with faith-based organizations, health outcomes among various ethnicities can be improved" The program we did was called Walking to Jerusalam and we kept track of miles walked, etc. The thing I liked about it was not only the exercise but the fact that there were also daily devotionals to read. So it "killed" two birds with one stone so to speak. Unfortunately I was not able to find the article on line. The whole point of all this is that it talks about the obesity problem in the USA and how working with and through faith based organizations ie: churches many people can positively be reached to help them start and maintain a healthier lifestyle. oh, here is what the article says on this: "More than one third of the US population is obese whereas 17% of youth ages 2-19 are obese. This paper describes the partnership between a predominantly African American church in central Texas [Austin!!] with a state university nursing school to reduce obesity through a health promotion program. Based upon the success of the partnership and impact of the program, this partnership could serve as an exemplar for other churches and universities in developing health programs."

NOW TO THE QUESTIONS...
So my question, after all this is...would you be willing to look at a program either made by someone else or made by me using a number of other programs to come up with it? And I found something on line through the American Heart Association that was mentioned in this article called HealthVault where you can keep track of your medical information. It is a free program that you can sign up to use as part of the Heart360 program. Please go to the American Heart Association website and take a look at what this is about without signing in to anything. Is this something you might find useful to use?

I know that Jan has a personalized workout agenda... but would you be interested in doing something like this with us? Some of the things I'm thinking of would be very simple such as no soda for a week, no potato chips after dinner, etc and include a short, short, reading devotional such as a scripture or quote for each day. I'd like to start out with 6 weeks of it then evaluate and continue or change, etc. I think that it would be the kind of thing that the whole family would find helpful. It would start out very slow and work up to some things a little harder or longer in length. I'm sure that each of you can put your own twist on some of what I'm thinking about doing if you want/need to. Unfortunately, I'll have to keep track of my sugars, blood pressure, etc on a daily basis as well, where some of you will not have to do that.

Soooo,,, let me know what you think of all this. ASAP ladies, time's a wastin'.