Our Why
As the age of 50 was creeping around the corner, and the age of 53 for my husband, we realized that we are getting closer to retirement, magically gained a few extra pounds, and lost more flexibility that we wish to admit to out load. Then we also looked at our parents. Both of our parents are weaker than they should be. This greatly affects their quality of life. We definitely want a healthy and active retirement, when the time comes.
Our long-term goal is to retire as early as possible. I went back to work after being a stay-at-home wife with the goal of early retirement. I quickly learned that my body did not enjoy the new lifestyle. My upper back and neck were very sore at the end of the workday. Well, this meant I needed to build better stability muscles to keep from hurting every day. It was time to start lifting weights, but as it happens to us all life gets in the way.
Diet Time
Adjusting to life changes, it was time to get back on track with our health. I started picking up the weights again. Then the husband came up with the crazy idea of starting a carb cycling diet. We researched the diet and did the mathematical equations to figure out our calorie counts and macros. I was willing to use this diet as a starting point but knew that this was not a lifestyle change that we could do long term.
Now that I started to track my food, I noticed that there is a lot of nutritional points that we were missing in our diet. Focusing on macronutrients did not mean that we were hitting all the other nutrients. Potassium, for an example, was always very low. My father has a Magnesium deficiency and recently my mother-in-law was hospitalized for low Potassium. We needed to change our focus to overall nutrition.
Small Goals
Over the years we have wanted to lose weight, and always with lofty goals. Only thinking of the end results was not working. This time we decided to set small goals and not look for the end results. Sounds easy, but as I said earlier 50 is approaching and I have a big beach vacation coming up with my family.
However, we started with small goals. The bikini on the beach for my 50th birthday would be fantastic, but not my goal right now. We also decided that not only would the goal be small, but it would also not have a time frame. We were just going to work for a smaller weight loss goal. I went for seeing the scale at 160 pounds, which is 12 pounds from my starting weight. My husband started at 286 pounds, and he wanted to get to 270 pounds. Again, no time frame but we wanted to see progression.
Where We Are Today
It has now been three months since we started our health journey. Today we have met our small goals. My husband is wanting to maintain his current weight for now and focusing on flexibility. I am focused on building more muscle and improving my flexibility. I know that muscle weighs more than fat, so watching the scale move is not part of the next leg of my journey.
Each day that we work towards bettering our health is making a difference in the life we want to live. This is just the beginning of our journey, and we are happy to be sharing it with you.