Hooray for Healthiness!

Lee and Denise,
catering at a wedding in
September 2013.

HI! I'm Denise and I am fast becoming a health expert on me! I am not a doctor or health specialist and I have no educational or professional training, but I'm smart and curious: and that is helping me take control of my own body and be a positive, healthy person. Yay!
Just to let y'all know, I have been losing weight on a steady scale for the first time in my life. And it feels good! I've tried a few "diets" before just because I wanted to shed some extra pounds, but I have never had my heart in it because I know there are dangers to losing weight fast and that "diets" never work. I've even tried weight loss supplements and drinks. Nope, nothing.
Okay, so the quotation marks are there for a reason. A "diet" is something you do temporarily to lose weight. "Changing your diet" is something you do for life; for weight loss, for healthiness, for permanent.
I went in to this about 3/4-heartedly. I wanted to do it because I want to lose weight, I want to be healthier and it made sense. But there was a small part of me (a 1/4?) that had doubts.
But it's working!
I stepped on the scale this morning and I had lost another pound!
I am so motivated now. I have been wanting to tell everyone about this plan and so the first thing I thought was "I'm going to start a blog!"
So here I am, blogging. This is meant to be helpful to whoever wants to read it. You can see what I am doing and maybe it will work for you, too. But, and here's the disclaimer part, I am no expert. If you have any dietary issues or health risks or whatever, please consult your doctor. I can't be responsible for what happens to YOU, but I can share what is happening to ME and possibly inspire you to be healthy as well. And I really do hope that that inspiration happens!
With this in mind, I hope to share my entire healthy lifestyle ways, not just diet, for I believe that being healthy involves your body, your mind and your emotions. It's all-over wellness that makes us healthy, not just cutting out certain things we eat or adding in some exercise. So here we go!

Health Is Wealth
Today I'd like to share a few thoughts and my beginnings.
I am a mother of five. I got married at 19 to the kindest, cutest, most loving man in the universe. We had our first child when I was 20 and our fifth when I was 30. It was exactly what I wanted. The extra weight I gained after each child? Not so much.
My hubby worked for many years at a desk job and probably gained a bit of weight out of sympathy for me. And because he wasn't so active any more. Throughout his college years he worked full time at a block plant and was lean and trim from the physical labor. Then he graduated. He had a high-stress job working for large corporations as an accountant, a very stressful commute (2 hours each way, every day), and would leave early, come home late, so he wasn't about to do anything but veg. Poor guy!
I have had my share of part-time jobs but mostly I've been a stay-at-home mom. And I was busy enough that I didn't "have time" to be healthy. When was I supposed to exercise? How could we afford the healthier foods that I should have been feeding my family? So was my thought process. I thought taking the kids to the park and shopping and all the housework should have been exercise enough.

Now our kids are grown. Our oldest three are married and starting their own families. Our two youngest are adults and mostly on their own. So now we are left with just the two of us and we are still not slim or fit. So we decided we had to make a change.

My husband's father died from prostate cancer and he has family history of diabetes. My very active, healthy, fit dad (who was a fireman and, after he retired, an EMS) discovered he had heart disease and had to have quintuple bypass surgery at age 69. And we both went to a health screening and discovered that, while we both have healthy bones, we have high cholesterol and are at risk for diabetes, along with a few other health problems that aren't a concern yet.

So this inspired us to get on board with a change in diet, a better exercise program, and a change in attitude.

My husband Lee watched a program on Netflix called "Forks Over Knives." This inspired him the most because of what he learned. In a nutshell, doctors did studies and found that changing people to a vegan diet gave them longer life and actually reversed some of their health issues such as diabetes and heart disease. (Watch it to learn more!)

Okay, if you're like me, you just thought "ugh, vegans!" Yeah, I have always been averse to going strictly vegan or even vegetarian.

First, the difference. A vegetarian is "a person who does not eat or does not believe in eating meat, fish, fowl, or, in some cases, any food derived from animals, as eggs or cheese, but subsists on vegetables, fruits, nuts, grain, etc." A vegan is "a vegetarian who omits all animal products from the diet." (Dictionary.com)

So, according to these definitions, they aren't very different. But it seems like our society has basically defined a vegetarian as someone who doesn't eat meat and a vegan as someone who doesn't eat meat or any animal products. For simplification in understanding throughout my blog, I will use these latter definitions.

Going Vegan
Neither of us wanted to do this based on any beliefs, basically. Eating meat is just fine in our book. But after learning a few things from this movie we watched, it made sense to cut out meat - at least, for the most part. After learning that these men (scientists, doctors) made a direct link between cow's milk and prostate cancer, Lee decided to go vegan. That was understandable, since his dad had lost the battle with prostate cancer a few years ago. I, on the other hand, wasn't so sure about cutting out eggs and cheese. Not totally, anyway.

Sometimes when you want to get from being a one to being an eight, you need to go to ten and slowly come back. So that's what we did. We dove all the way in, then slowly came back a little.

Lee decided to totally cut out ALL meat and dairy (and eggs can be considered dairy, since they come from a farm). I cut out meat, except for small amounts of fish, and most dairy. I still put a little cheese on my veggie pizza, ate sushi, and had some products that contain egg or milk such as muffins. I even put a little butter on things once in awhile. But for the most part, we became vegetarians. Not totally and forever, but for now and for however long we decide to keep up this change.

Weight Loss Happens
We began our journey around Feb. 15, 2014. Lee's weight was up at 238 and I was 221. (He's 6'2" and I am 5'7"). We also joined Anytime Fitness (gym) just before that and decided to make a habit of going. Mostly Lee works out on a few of the machines then does cardio on the elliptical and I jog on the treadmill. We decided to go 3 times a week but sometimes we only make it twice in a week.

On Feb. 24 I was down to 213. Lee weighed in at 232.

Today I weighed myself and I was 209! I can't tell you how excited I felt! And Lee is at 220. I have lost a total, so far, of 12 pounds and he has lost 18!

Diet
Changing your diet isn't easy. But the thing that helps the most is finding recipes that sound good and trying them out. I have found so many good recipes on the internet (food sites, Pinterest) and whenever I go to Barnes and Noble, I stop and check out the vegetarian cookbooks or any kind of recipe book that has healthy eating in it. I even buy some of them once in awhile, too.

When you focus on what you CAN eat and not what you CAN'T eat, it helps, too. And that's not always easy, but when you make that shift, you can do it.

Background: I am a caterer. I fix cakes and cookies and cheesecake and steak and chicken and all sorts of yummy things for people all the time. Do you think it's easy to be around all that food and not want to eat it? Yeah, NO!

So if I can do it, you can, too! And here's a little hint for ya: once you start focusing on nutritious food and trying to fix healthy vegetables and eat more beans and rice (and I am NOT a bean person. Yuck!) then you find that all the cravings for those cookies and things disappear. I really like eating some of these foods that I didn't like before!

And I feel good. I feel like running (which I swore I would never do). I actually choose to eat beans (which I hated before). And I don't miss meat. Okay, I really miss bacon but the longer I go without it, the more I just admire it from afar.

We cut out meat (except the sushi for me) for 3 weeks. Then we decided that eating meat once in awhile wasn't horrible so we went out to Panda Express and had some Kung Pao Chicken. Mmmmm.

So, if you are interested in finding out the end of this story, follow this blog and watch what happens. I will update as much as I can and keep telling you all the things I am doing to make a Healthy Me!

Here's to all-over health and happiness!
Hugs and cheers!
Denise