First week of the challange-Dec. 27-Jan 2(for those who

choose to start now. I did on Monday and have been really careful about everything but salt. We were given a can of 3 kinds of popcorn and while they are not as salty as some we have had we both react strongly to much salt in our diets. Even on strong doses of diuretics we hold water if we eat much salt. I have to make myself think SODIUM CONTENT when preparing meals now. We still have some pickled herring from Christmas and I dole it out a piece or 2 a day. I may throw the popcorn out to the wild & tame birds. I'm sure they will eat it gladly.

While we will never become true vegetarians, we are going to be eating a lot more fruits and veggies this year. I have to school myself to serve it even if he doesn't choose to eat it. With the degus in the house I have to keep raw veggies that are low in carbs on hand anyway. They get diabetes easily-or so I read.

For those who don't know-and most people don't, degus are little brown rodents from the coastal regions of Chile. They are the size & color of gerbils and most closely related to rabbits. 10 were exported to England in the 1950s to study diabetes and from those 10 all domestic degus are decended. Our population exploded from 3 to 10 a few days ago and we are getting watch the babies grow up. No, the babies and any males except of the one runt one we bought(we didn't know it was going to be a runt tho that would have made certain I would have bought it. I always have a special place in my heart for the runts and underlings.)don't get to stay. I didn't intend to breed them. We were given a female who turned out to be pregnant tho we didn't know that at the time.

GOD bless and keep each of you. Give this weight-or lack thereof-to JESUS and let HIM fight the battle thru you. Be the insturment of HIS will and you will reach the proper weight at the proper time.