Welcome to Wellness Wednesdays

Welcome to Wellness Wednesday!

This blog is about hiking and for me, hiking is inextricably linked to wellness. David and I discovered hiking as a way to lose weight and maintain our weight loss.  We started small and have been exploring and challenging ourselves ever since.  That said, while hiking has become a necessary piece of our wellness routine, it alone is not sufficient to maintain health and weight loss. Here I’ll talk about our weight loss journey, what we’ve learned through trial and error, the diets, the science, our ups and downs, our failures and our successes. I’ll talk about the diet and exercise routines that we use to help us stay fit and focus on how we tailor these things to stay in good hiking shape.  I will provide you with some very useful tools along the way.

In the beginning:

I still remember the day we decided we needed to lose weight. I was sitting on the couch; and my husband, David, was lying on his back on the floor. We were watching something, probably Sci Fi related, on T.V…as usual (not that there is anything wrong with Sci Fi; loved it then, love it now).  I was exhausted, I had absolutely no energy and I should have been fine, I’d been relaxing all day, right?! Wrong. 

Side note: One thing I have learned through this whole crazy process is that sitting around begets more sitting around. I’ve found that the days where I feel least like exercising are the days I should make sure I move.  If I'm feeling lazy and lethargic, I need to get out and do something. Any movement will do, but getting outside to move or going out to dance seem to be the two approaches that work best for me. 

I looked at my husband and it occurred to me that we were getting to that age, I was 38 and David was 46. We were getting to that age where you start to hear about people your age passing away from things like cancer, heart attacks, and other illnesses that are linked to lifestyle.  Most of these are linked to obesity or are diet related. The response to the passing of such young people is always one of shock, “…but he was too young to have a heart attack…”  My husband and I were on that road. We were both obese.  Both of us were closing in on 300 pounds (David 278 and me 289). We had heart disease, diabetes, and cancer in our families. It occurred to me on that day - we were going to be the subjects of those stories if we did not make some drastic changes. I love my husband; we were and are very happy, I wanted to do everything I could to keep both of us around for a long time. I know that sometimes these diseases strike even the most fit and healthy people, but being obese certainly increased the likelihood of early mortality. We needed to lose weight. I discussed this with David, and he agreed. It was daunting, but we were on our way. 

We could not have imagined the changes we were about to make, and how extraordinarily those changes would impact the quality of our lives.  

Before:

After...