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John's Weight Loss Journey

A few years ago (two or three to be exact), John began noticing a physical change in his belly (yes, that's his anatomical term for it).  It was starting to stick out like any self-respecting 50-year-old's would.

So he decided to start a diet.

And through my ups and downs, and my starts and restarts, he has just kept plugging away.  He lost the first ten pounds using MyFitnessPal, but after about a year, he just wasn't losing any more weight.  So several months ago, he started using Weight Watchers.

He has now lost over 20 pounds, and he looks terrific!

His path to success?  On Weight Watchers, you can eat all the chicken, turkey, fruit and vegetables that you want for free.  In other words, if you're allowed 34 points a day (I think that's his total), he can spend the entire day eating any of those free foods and still have 34 points to eat.  For reference, a chocolate chip cookie is three points, and a slice of lemon meringue pie is 13.

Needless to say, he is not far off when he speaks of "Body Built By Chicken" while displaying his trimmer physique, nor am I surprised anymore when two pounds of deli turkey is gone with a couple of days.  And I no longer wondered where are the apples were going when I saw him take three of them for breakfast on the way to church.

It has been a long journey for him, but he has a really healthy approach about his large weight fluctuations.  He watches the "trend" now.  Is he trending down?  For example, on any given day, he would weigh in around 203.  Now, he rarely goes above 200.  It's a good trend, and it's a healthy weigh to keep the long perspective.

We do take a cheat day once a week although to our credit, we don't cheat that much simply because we're too sick afterwards otherwise.  I had told John that I didn't want anything besides a piece of pie (and I sure wasn't going to make one because that would mean I would be the likely candidate to eat most of it throughout any given day), so we stopped by Grand Traverse Pie Company.  I got my one slice of banana cream pie, but John wanted lemon meringue...but they were only selling it by the entire pie.  So yes, we do scheduled cheating :-)

So we are in Grand Cayman on vacation at the moment (although we have left behind our physical surroundings, we have not left behind the emotional stresses unfortunately), and John was crazily surprised to put on his swim suit.  He's had it for several years, and kudos to Lands End for selling one that just doesn't need to be replaced.  Here's what he noticed:





This has also happened with his suits (especially the one he just bought in January for Mark's wedding--it looks like he's wearing clown pants now), and there are no more holes in his belt that cinch his pants properly.

And how nice is it to be here where we can grab an entire bowl of fruit to eat before we start in on anything else?


For the record, I'm almost back down to where I was at the end of last summer (my best diet experience happened at Interlochen, summer of 2017), and I'm hoping to keep going.  I'm not sure how much more weight John can lose, but we're definitely working on staying as young and fit as we can for as long as we can!





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