Eat 4 Today, the blog, was inspired by a lifestyle change I made last summer. At the time I was struggling with the side effects resulting from, well – obesity. I’m not going into upset you by listing them all here. But, I will share the facts that at the time my stomach was constantly upset and I had pretty-much uncontrolled diabetes.

I’d like to pretend that my concern about the diabetes inspired the changes in my life. But, it wasn’t that at all. It was the constant upset stomach and other signs that my body was totally overstressed by all the extra weight I was carrying.

It was an extremely depressing time for me. I’ve never successfully kept weight off. Oh, I’ve maintained my weight long enough to think I was in control. But, sooner or later a family emergency or a prolonged period of chaos would prove that when things get bad, I eat. And eat, and eat and I eat.

Then, finally, I thought of a solution that works for me.

I had been thinking about how frustrating it was that I couldn’t just give up eating. I never had any trouble quitting smoking – but, you can’t solve food issues quite that easily. I knew I could go back to Weight Watcher’s and lose weight at a pretty reasonable rate. But then what? Does anyone keep weight off once they stop going to meetings? I certainly never have.

I read an analysis of weight programs on Consumer Reports online, and they said that lots of diet plans worked, success was really a matter of finding what works for you. Great, that was a big help.

And then I realized that while I couldn’t give up eating, I could give up eating between meals and I could give up taking seconds.

And I could do this just for today. And I would try this experiment for a year.

So, all I have to do is get through today without snacking. I can eat what I want for my meals. But once I’ve served myself, I cannot go back for seconds.

Eating for today has changed my life. While before, I was looking for a program that I could follow for the rest of my life, now I’ve got a program that only has to work for today. Just today.

And it’s the story of that plan, and the experience of sharing my experience with friends that inspired the Eat4Today blog. My situation is hardly unique; in fact millions of us share those struggles.

I’m Catharine Hendricks, known around here as katiebird. I’ll be contributing articles about the status of my Eat 4 Today plan as well as thoughts about the diet industry (I’ve given a lot of thought to Weight Watchers), controlling diabetes and how my feelings about world events affects my ability to deal with any of this.

In the next day or two the other Authors will introduce themselves. We each have our own particular interests. But, we also plan on commenting on each others articles — we all like a good discussion. We hope that Eat4Today will be a place where we can encourage and support each other in our daily struggles with food, eating and associated health issues.

And we hope that you will also.