jack sprat could eat no fat

His wife could eat no lean. Oh yeah, that's us. While I've been put on a non-fasting diet, the hubby is watching his blood pressure. I'm not really sure if his blood pressure has really changed a great deal, but that certainly the latest studies on blood pressure have changed how doctors react to the different levels. Where once a person was "borderline" they are now called stage 1. Thus they recommend that doctors do more for the stage 1 folks. While before they would simply advise diet change and excercise, they are now prescribing blood pressure meds and having a home blood pressure monitor.

So now we have two charts at home. One that I was using to check off that I did my 15 minutes of tidying up and another to mark the hubby doing his 45 minutes of aerobic activity a day. One doesn't jump into going to the gym 7 times a week instantaneously, so he's working his way up. Three times a week for the first few weeks, then upping it to four times then 5 times. Each week we complete we have little rewards and prizes for ourselves. I feel like I'm in kindergarten waiting for the gold and red stars to get stuck on my chart. Whoever knew this would still work for me as an adult!

He's found the hills around our place a convenient workout in the morning and that there's a new 24 hour fitness fit lite facility walking distance from home that he can use as part of his membership. So between bowling, fit-lite, walking the hills, and an occassional tai chi class, we hope he has a combination of workouts and options to keep him amused.

We've switched much of his diet coke drinking with juice with 1/3 to a half of carbonated Pelligrino water, which provides hime with the carbonation kick he seems to need. It's a bit more sugar than diet soda, but at least it's real juice. I've gotten into drinking this myself. It's like making your own orange soda but with vitamins and the ability to make it less sweet when you want it to.

And to keep his mind off of "losing weight" which kind of depresses him. It's the whole idea of "loss" that tends to upset him. We've given him the motto of each day he works out, he adds a day to his life. Which of course only works if he actually likes his life, which is why the calendar is full of various adventures and travels for a while.

We've gotten to our one year anniversary and now it's time for us to do things to make sure we'll have plenty more to come.