It’s been three years!!!

On December 15, 2016, Bill thought he was about to die. Not everyone gets a second chance at life – but many do. If you had a second chance, what would you do to make a difference in your life?

Long story short (you can see all the previous posts we wrote here), it’s now been three years so it’s time to give an update. We did a one year update, but we were too busy enjoying life last December for a second year update.

When we started his radical lifestyle change, eating healthy and exercising for cardio health, I’d periodically ask him if he thinks he could keep it up. He’d say, “ask me in another six months,” or “in a year.” I wanted to do all I could to encourage him and keep him on track.….I was ecstatic with his changes because they benefitted my health as well.

This picture was taken in April 2013. We were about at our heaviest, Bill at about 230 pounds and me, pushing 150. It’s so funny as we look back now because we said then that we ate a healthy diet. We just didn’t share about all the unhealthy things we “unconsciously” ate….

Beautiful setting in Key Biscayne, Florida.

We stopped eating out years earlier for a variety of reasons. One thing was that Bill is a bit of a germaphobe. He was a self taught cook – he began to enjoy his own cooking more than restaurant food. BUT when we did eat out, he wanted to eat things he couldn’t cook – which were usually very fattening meals! Then his day of reckoning….

He realized he had never really eaten properly. At 6’2″, he could eat what he wanted and it didn’t really “show.” But as his once size 33″ waist began to creep up and up, to where even the “relaxed fit” with a stretch waist band began to approach 38″, he knew he had a problem.

As for me, I was used to the yo yo diet syndrome. I’d gain 10, loose 5, gain 10, lose 5 until I was suddenly 30 pounds overweight. I had become a bit of an exercise nut in college – so that helped with my weight. But in 2009, I injured my knee which stopped any form of exercise. I finally joined the YMCA and for 7 months, literally swam off about 10 pounds. But then we began to travel and no more pool. Then a miracle (long story) happened and my knee was healed. It got to the point, if I didn’t walk at least two miles a day, my knees bothered me. So I pushed for three miles, averaging about 15 miles a week. Then Bill’s day of reckoning!

Bill not only realized he needed to radically change how he ate, he wanted to REVERSE his heart disease. That meant he needed to do cardio exercise. So now I had a partner! Granted, between 2013 (when we began to RV) up until 2016, we could hike 10 miles easily. But that was at a slow and leisurely pace. After December 2016, we began to go for time to get our heart rate up.

So here we are, three years later! We are still on track. We rarely eat out, but the rare times we must, we are very careful what we order. We do feel a bit ostracized in some situations because we don’t eat yummy baked goods. Bill has decided to just say, “this is our culture.”

Merry Christmas 2019

TRUE CONFESSIONS: I will confess, I did eat a sliver of blueberry pie and a sliver of pumpkin pie over Thanksgiving….Notice, I had two slivers (a day apart). Bill says one sliver of any dessert won’t kill him, but it puts him on a slippery slope. And he knows he can easily slide – and I just proved I can slide down fast. It’s just best to say no from now on.

May each and everyone who reads this have a blessed and very Merry Christmas!