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Chapter One...
The Bible says, "To those whom much is given, much is expected." I believe every single human being inherently possesses at least one unique and helpful trait.
I was born with energy to burn...and have been relentlessly igniting it for more than seventy-two years. Thank goodness-with appropriate fuel-human energy is continuously renewable.
Healthy eating. The right fuel. Healthy living. The happy result.
I'm not one to bury the lead, as they say in the news profession. So here's my primary message, the core essence of this book, presented to you in the fourth paragraph of the first chapter: "Exercise your thinking rights. Choose wisely. Live happily."
What is happiness? Doesn't your answer reflect one of the beauties of freedom?
We are free to think. We are free to choose. We don't do either in a vacuum. We balance faith and fear, ambition and inertia, confidence and insecurity, strength and weakness, belief and doubt. We consider family, friends, and our connection with the web of life.
The "web of life" is an expression credited to my namesake, Chief Seattle. It means we're all part of the same whole...an aggregate greater than its sum.
All things considered, I agree. My sense of the reality of such a web has been a reliable guide to help me make choices and handle their consequences.
Remembering my life-re-living it in a real way, in order to write it down-has been a singular and invigorating pleasure. Looking back, I am able to diagram how my earlier thoughts and experiences led me to design and build a company that prepares and delivers fresh and healthy meals.
Fascinating. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer had the opinion that every life, viewed in retrospect, is arranged like a good novel. Or, I might add, an intriguing movie.
And here's the most exciting part: I couldn't help but notice that, while I am living mine, I am also writing it. This is not unique to me.
Your life, for example, is your movie. You are the star, the scriptwriter, the director, and the producer. Meeting those responsibilities requires a lot of energy. Which brings us back to fuel.
What we eat is, by definition, our diet. So everyone is on a diet.
You are reading a book about healthy eating. Therefore, it is a diet book. The last one you'll ever need, in my opinion, because Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating is based on common sense and scientific fact.
The shaping events of my life, and my desire to improve people's eating habits, have been intertwined for decades. Here are a few examples:
Scene One:
During my childhood years, people didn't read food labels, didn't think much about what they were eating, didn't know much about calories. My dear father, so wonderful to me all our lives together, kept gaining weight until eventually he tipped the scales at 385 pounds. When I went away to nursing school in 1950, I worried so much about him that I mailed menu plans for my mother to follow.
His doctors told him to lose 100 pounds or face the certain prospect of congestive heart failure. To shed his excess, he tried hard to minimize his food intake. Despite some temporary success, he was unable to overcome the frustrations of maintaining a "gimmick" diet.
Scene Two:
In 1969, when our children had grown, I began to assist my husband in his medical practice in Marseilles, Illinois (about 70 miles southwest of Chicago). Kelly was a true family doctor. He did it all-obstetrics, pediatrics, orthopedics. There were no specialists around when he began his practice in 1957.
Some people tease me that I married Kelly Sutton because my first name went so well with his last. Whatever prompted our nuptials should be praised, because in August of 2004, we celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary.
Much of my time in Dr. Sutton's office was devoted to paperwork and administrative matters. I learned quite a bit about the practicalities of managing a business.
I was also involved with his patients. Knowing of my strong interest in helping the obese improve their nutrition, Kelly asked me to educate them about healthy eating.
How discouraging to hand patients a piece of paper listing foods to eat and avoid, knowing they most likely would not follow the guidelines.
I'm a nurse! I want to heal! I ached to find a better way!
Scene Three:
Quite a few years later, in 1985, Kelly was treating a Type 2 diabetes patient named Rodney Juergensen. Rodney listened while I outlined a healthy diet. He seemed attentive, but not enthusiastic.
Finally, he sighed, and looked me in the eye. "I know I should do what you suggest, but I am certain I won't. But I will follow your plan if you cook the meals for me."
In a flash the whole idea for Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating-in its entirety-came to me. I realized how to give people what they needed...how to plan...how to prepare...how to deliver.
Everything coalesced in one bright and shining instant. In a book or movie, they call such an event the "hinge."
My "hinge" was like a burning bush. We all have the potential for such a moment. Of course I had been preparing-without knowing it-virtually my whole life. That's the movie I am making.
Oh, sure, there was work to do. Plenty! But now I had the blueprint in my head. How should I begin? Here's a quote by an ancient Chinese sage that describes the process:
Lao Tzu: "Undertake difficult tasks by approaching what is easy in them; do great deeds by focusing on their minute aspects.
Beginning with just a few customers, progressing step-by-step, Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating has slowly advanced for nearly twenty years. We figured out a healthy menu plan, designed a mass-production kitchen, built our own truck-line. We learned how to soak your beans, bake your muffins, roast your turkey, and we deliver our meals to you fresh
Our first week (in 1985), our total order was 231 meals, mostly within or near Marseilles. In 2004, Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating prepared and delivered as many as 150,000 meals a week to customers in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Georgia.
Our customers, if they're honest with the program, lose weight and maintain their loss. Many have dropped more than 100 pounds. One man lost 215 pounds, and has maintained his new weight. The usual pace is one to three pounds a week, until a goal is reached.
All this without having to resort to unhealthy gimmick diets. In the following pages, I'll have a lot to say about fake or ill-considered weight loss schemes foisted on the public by business people overly concerned with gaining wealth and fame.
Let me give you a preliminary summation: Weight is gained or lost according to a basic calculation of calories in vs. calories out.
Common sense-and truth.
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