How Does a Southerner Give Up Salt and Grease?

It’s good to be home from the hospital. It’s extra awful to end up in the hospital because of your own stubbornness. I have resisted the fact that I am susceptible to congestive heart failure, although I have a genetic heart ailment. I have had three hospitalizations, counting this week, and I am finally convinced that my lifestyle has to change.

I grew up in the South in the United States, home of unhealthy eating and sweet tea. Indeed, when I grew up, everything on our plates that wasn’t dessert contained meat, even our vegetables. Green beans and ham hocks. Collard greens and fatback. Fried okra and fried tomatoes. Pinto beans and smoked turkey wings or legs. Salt was the main ingredient in all that we ate. And gravy covered everything but pies and cakes. I believe our very insides were greased down to protect us from who knows what. Even breakfast included biscuits filled with sausage gravy. It was like living in Grease Heaven.

I didn’t even know it was an unhealthy way to eat as a child, because that was how everyone ate. When I married my husband, who is from California, I was stunned when he cooked green beans that crunched. In my experience, food should be silent, but I have come to like stir-frys. However, enough restaurants are serving Southern or soul food like the kind I ate as a child to keep me happy.

But after spending a third trip in the hospital to have excess water removed from my legs and lungs, I am ready to change and give myself a chance at a quality of life for the years I have left. Only God knows the number of our days, but I have some control over not spending them jeopardizing my health. I took the packs of spare salt out of my purse and will stop salting my food before I taste it. It’s hard because I didn’t realize how much salt I consumed each day. That’s my error, and deciding not to take the Lasix every day also makes me my worst enemy. I enjoyed people’s compliments when I reported that in my 70s, I didn’t take any pills. I now realize that Lasix is a part of my everyday life. It’s a change that I can live with (pun intended).

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