Every Journey Starts Somewhere Part 1

The idea for this blog started a few months ago, when Matt (my husband) lost quite a bit of weight and we were regularly answering the question "Is he sick?" followed by "What are y'all doing?"

This blog is intended to answer the question of what we're doing.

First though, I need to start by taking y'all back.

Back to the beginning.

So pull up a chair, get comfy and bear with me as I fill y'all in on where we've been.

It was a fairly easy transition.

Matt and I grew up loving vegetables.

We hardly ever ate sugar and hated all the processed junk that we hear so much about these days.

All we really had to do was just start cutting out a little more fat and we were good to go.

The weight dropped off.

Simple.

The end.

OR

Maybe not.

Maybe the story went a little more like this.

Matt and I hated vegetables growing up.

I remember many a meal, sitting at the table, not being allowed to leave until I cleaned my plate.

I remember one meal in particular being gumbo with okra in it.

I'm sure it was delicious.

My Dad's a great cook.

But I was having none of it.

One of my sisters (can't remember which one, but I have a hunch) and I were stuck at the table until we finished.

We were trying the strategy of eating a bite and downing it with Kool-Aid.

We drank so much Kool-Aid, I thought I was going to throw up. My sister might've.

To this day I still don't eat okra.

For one of my birthdays, I thought it would be awesome if each guest got their own roll of cookie dough along with their own personal pint of Blue Bell.

I may or may not have been slightly overweight in my preteen years.

According to Matt, he never ate vegetables. He threw them across the room instead.

Our hatred of veggies is one of the reasons we thought we were meant for each other.

We would live a veggie-less life and be happy.

When we got married, that's exactly what we did.

I also did the coupon thing.

I cut coupons every week and bought what was on sale and used the coupons to get stuff dirt cheap or free.

We loved our life on Hamburger Helper, Cocoa Puffs and Pizza Rolls.

And then the weight started creeping on.

No big deal, right?

That happens to everyone.

So we started hitting the gym.

We worked out pretty hard for a while which kept things under control but still slowly creeping up.

I became aware of how not eating veggies might make one happy, but not necessarily healthy.

We began to think about whether we wanted to make changes while we still had the option or wait until we had some health condition that made it mandatory.

I started paying attention to magazine articles and Today Show segments that informed me on how to eat healthy.

I took notes.

We also began having some health issues.

Nothing major.

Just a few infections here and there.

Headaches.

Allergies.

Acne.

Colds.

Just the normal stuff.

But because they were fairly persistent, I began looking at what we might be able to do to help ourselves without spending a lot of money on yet another doctor's visit and prescription, which would lead to more side effects and over-the-counter solutions.

I'm definitely no expert on anything, so I figured if I was hearing that there was another way to eat and live and be healthy, why not try it?

So how did we get started?

Where did we go from there?

More next time.