ROVENIA BROCK: Good afternoon. It truly is a blessing to be here with you. Are you going to take this away? Okay. Well, I think Dr. Lillian Tom-Orme really has told you, and very eloquently, all you ever needed to know about diabetes and the statistics that, you know, accompany this very, you know, important problem. So I'm not going to talk to you about statistics; I'm going to talk to you about my real-life story and a couple of stories in the 15 minutes that I have to talk with you of others. I do have red and white, my cover. And I just want to let you know Dr. Tom-Orme would not tell you her age. I am 48, and I'm proud to be here. Now, I do that with a purpose, though. I want you to know the reason I share my age with you is because, one, this business of diabetes and all the other chronic diseases from which we as minorities suffer disproportionately really has a whole lot to do with lifestyle. Would you agree?

GROUP: Yes.

ROVENIA BROCK: And so I have made it my business to change my lifestyle, my eating habits, my exercise habits because one of the things that I think you ought to know about me—you know a little bit about what I do, but you don't really know who I am. I am born to a single mother. She was an independent, entrepreneurial spirit. My mother was from a small, country town in Virginia called Orange, Virginia. She was the first woman cab driver from her small town and the first, one of the first, African-American women drivers in the nation's capitol right here. Now, she owned her own cab company. It was in her name, Lavinia Brock, and she did that during the week. But on the weekends, my mama owned a juke joint. And so for those of you too young to know what that is, think Miss Seely in "The Color Purple." Now, I grew up on the weekends in this juke joint, and so in that juke joint, they served fried chicken sandwiches on white bread. You've heard the song, "Give Me a Pig Foot and a Bottle of Beer," it's true. I lived it. And having come from the small country town, on Sunday mornings in my grandma's house, they would serve breakfast, which would consist of country ham biscuits, sodium count through the roof; fried salt fish; fried potatoes and onions; fried apples; fried scrapple; and then, there would be a whole cake of bread. For those of you who don't know, that's white cornmeal mixed with water cooked on top of the stove to make your cornbread. And that's just for breakfast, and it would be topped off with my grandma's stand-up-straight coffee. They called it that because they said it was so strong, it was almost as if it could walk on its own. So this was my sort of nutritional orientation.

I want you to fast forward to a point in my life where I'm out of Virginia State University in undergraduate school, and I'm now sitting on television, on Black Entertainment Television, hosting "Heart and Soul." I have now, through graduate school and life having its way with me, I've gained an extra 30 pounds. And I want to tell you that when you have an extra 30 pounds on my small frame, the result is that you can barely go up and down flights of stairs without being winded. You can barely bend over to retrieve something that you've dropped on the floor without your bones creaking as though you were 90 years old, and the quality of your life is not what it should be. And so I knew that I needed to make some changes. I did so first by cutting back portions. I began to cut all of my portions in half. Did you know you could save 500 calories a day if you did that, just whatever you're doing right now, because this business of living healthy, escaping diabetes and preventing heart diseases and all its other intended diseases of diet, of obesity and overweight-ness really has to do with making small, incremental changes in your lifestyle. Amen.

GROUP: Yes.

ROVENIA BROCK: And so what I did was cut portions in half, and I also began to leave food on the plate. Now, I lost my biological mother to stomach cancer with metastasis when I was just nine years old, but I had the blessing of having her best friend, with whom she had brokered a deal that when her time came, this woman would continue to raise me. And so my guardian did so, and I had her with me up until just eight years ago. But she was a woman who had survived the depression, and so I could hear her ringing in my ear as I started to leave food on the plate, "What about the starving children in Africa?" But I want you to know today that the starving children in Africa are not going to benefit one iota from that little food you leave on the plate. And if it is important to you, send them the money that you would have spent on it. Now, I started to leave food on the plate, I cut my portions in half, and the other thing I knew I needed to do was get my butt off up the couch and get moving, you see. So I ate differently. Now, I'm eating five to six small meals a day, and I'm talking about eating far more colorful fresh vegetables and fruit, more beans and brown rice, not the white rice we had for lunch today. I'm having whole grain breads and cereals. Don't eat white bread, you see, and I'm having smaller amounts of lean protein.

That can come in the forms of fish, chicken, turkey. It could even be soy. Black folks, we can eat some tofu. I'm saying that this is a way that we can get a new lease on our life because life really is for the living, and it is not a natural part of the aging process that people lose limbs and become blind as a result of diabetes. Amen? I remember when my editor first asked me to think back as I wrote my story in chapter one of this book, think back to when you first make the diet/disease connection. I was in second grade. I grew up in Ledroit Park, right where Howard University sits. And I'm playing on the playground, and my classmate Brian says to me in a sing-songy seven-year-old voice, "My daddy had to have his legs cut off." And I said to him, "Why would your daddy have to have his legs cut off?" I'm furious. "Because of diabetes." And so at the conclusion of our playtime, I rush into the house. My mom is cooking, of course, in the kitchen. And I say to her, "Brian's dad had to have his legs cut off because of something called diabetes. Why is that?" She says, "Oh, he's got a touch of sugar, and those folks have to watch what they eat." But it isn't a natural part of the aging process that we all befall diabetes because of having a touch of sugar, and it isn't a natural part of the aging process that we get strokes as a result and that hypertension causes the blood pressure to go up and all of those things that work together with metabolic syndrome and its attending diseases. This is not a natural part of the aging process, but some folks in our community seem to think it is. We have come to expect that this will be our reality as we get older. We have come to expect that we'll be overweight, that we'll be obese, and that we'll be sick and tired and just sick and tired of being sick and tired. We don't have to be. That's the good news.

The good news is that the power resides within each and every one of us, everyone within the sound of my voice to make small, incremental changes in his or her life so that we can life the rich, happy, healthy, productive life that the creator intends for all of us. We can all do that, and we can start today. When you leave this room, there is something that you can do. If you didn't have eight eight-ounce glasses of water yesterday, you can drink one more today than you did yesterday. You may not be walking two or three miles a day three times a week, but you can start by increasing your steps by 20 today or tomorrow. Each and every one of us can do something to inherit the rich, healthy, productive life intended for us. It is not where you start, but it is where you end up. We are not a problem people; we are simply a people with a few problems, and we can fix them. We can fix them. We can do something for ourselves. Now, you've heard Pat Ware say earlier today that she has begun to take care of herself. As women, we've taken care of everyone, everyone. Historically, no matter what our ethnic background, historically, we've taken care of everyone but ourselves. Isn't it time we tried to take care of ourselves? Isn't it time we started to make a change for our tomorrow, because those who depend on you for everything will not inherit that, you know, destiny intended for them because you can't be there for them if you're not there for themselves—for yourself.

When you get on an airplane to fly somewhere, they tell you what? If in the event of a catastrophe and that oxygen mask drops, put it on who before you? Put it on yourself before you try to fix somebody else. We've got to do that by taking our lives into our own hands and beginning to make small, incremental changes. This is not as hard as most people would have you think. It ain't the Atkins diet. This is real life. It's real life, but the good news is that we can do it. And everyone can do it. Now, you can start getting moving simply by putting one foot before the other, stepping outside your door, and hitting the pavement. It is the Black woman's favorite word: free. Am I kidding? So we can all do this. I want to leave you with something. First, I want to tell you that there are postcards for the book. I encourage you please to go to your nearest bookstore, your nearest bookseller and pick up a copy. I promise you, you'll be glad you did. There is also an online support group called the Dr. Ro Living Healthy Club, where we help to keep you connected to the information in the book. I'm going to leave some of these at the table outside the door. Now, I want to leave you with this. Every morning in Africa, a gazelle awakens with the knowledge that he must outrun a lion lest he be eaten. That same morning, a lion awakens with the knowledge that he must outrun that gazelle or he will perish and go hungry. When you meet the dawn of your new day, whether you are the lion or the gazelle, you'd better be running. I thank you.