73 & 80 POUNDS LIGHTER

The top picture is of me and my lovely hubby at  our heaviest.  We didn't see ourselves as fat, we were too in love and we both weighed the same weight.  325 pounds.  We love food and we love each others company.  I so far have lost 73 pounds and my hubby has lost 80 pounds.  Yeah he winning LOL.

Here is a little bit of our story and how we did it without even being aware of it.  If you ask about a diet, there was no diet. I have always home cooked then and home cook now and we eat what we want.  If my hubby craves chocolate chip cookies I make them.



                                                               My hubby and I have a unspoken understanding                                                                                      when we shop for food.  It's bizarre but it works.

                                                               We buy the same thing over and over and we do

not deviate from what we buy. This was the old shopping list. Milk, eggs, fruits, veggies, turkey, chicken, turkey sausage, can tuna, can beans, can olives, can pinapple, pasta, rice, butter, bread, fruit juices, tortillas, grains such as wheat berry, quinoa, flour, wheat flour, chocolate chips, olive oil, lots of spices,  Corn meal, sugar's. Frozen blue berries and peas. Yogurt. Cheese, Coffee.   Note: I use to drink fappucinos every day.
This is about all their is to our shopping list. No frozen or packaged food.

    We didn't intend to lose weight it just kind of happened.  We both will stop buying things with out talking to each other and one of those things was Fruit juice.  We just stopped and found our selves bring up the subject of weight and exercise while standing over the scale.   I didn't expect it to read anything else other than 325, but got on it any way and was shocked that it read 315.  I was in such disbelief and utter amazement I got off and on the scale about 10 more time totally convinced that something was wrong with it.  My hubby also noticed the same 10 pound difference when he got on.   We both look at each like HUH!?   Then it dawned on us it was because we had stopped drinking the OJ, Cranberry juice, apple juice, and other brands of juice.  10 pounds gone just from stopping juice. WOW!
This was the catalyst that got us motivated to keep it off.  I eventually stopped drinking my beloved frappucinos and started drinking tea and more water. Note Coffee is life, we both still do drink it as a treat rather than a staple.
Our new shopping list does not include, bread, fruit juice, tortillas, olive oil.  

I got this down to a science, by keeping track of what we have when we have it.
Ice cream will really be a treat, about every 6 to 7 months.
Bacon haven't had it in year's.
Potato chips year's since we eaten them.
Donuts year's
                                                                Soda Pop. Haven't had soda pop in over 4 years.
                                                                Beer / Wine Never drink.  If you want to pack on the                                                                     pounds alcohol is a sure fire way to do it.

We both started out with baby steps walking around the block, then walking four miles.   I have a saying " Slow and steady wins the race, fast a furious fall on your face."
We have been steadily building up our resistance to what we can do for over 2 years.   Yeah slow, but very healthy.
It was extremely hard at first, but after a while our bodies were like why aren't you exercising?  And you get to the point that if you don't exercise you don't feel right. For us it's a combination of great love and respect for each other, determination, and discipline.   We do it for each other and we support each other.

Now we both can cycle for 2 hours, walk for 2 hour and do minimal jogging.  But we don't do this every day.  We keep things interesting my doing different things.   We both are currently training for a 100 mile ride for next year 2016.  This is for us and our health.

Our meal plan is very plain.  Most of the recipes I post that are two week or three week special meals we do not eat these foods meals every day.   What we do eat is a lot of soups, dirty rice, home made tortilla wraps, fruit, very light pasta salads and then keep the other recipes for a treat, not all the time.

So I'm always trying to think of healthier versions, to shave off calories.