The way we were…

A food-free post?!? I know, shocker 🙂 But I thought I’d introduce you to my life…and tomorrow I’ll regale you with CSA pictures, deal?

A long time ago, I lived in Portugal. I lived on the Azores and I met the cutest boy at a street festival. He had the most amazing smile, the funniest laugh and was so good-lookin’. So, I lied to said cute boy and told him I was 18 and we spent the night canoodling (keep it PG, ladies, I was 15) in the streets. Of course, he finds out how old I am, freaks out and tells me to never speak to him again. But, it was a crazy case of unrequited love.

Fast forward 6 years, I’m living in Texas and MySpace is on the scene. Didn’t everyone look up exes to see what they were up to? Well, of course I had to look up the one that got away…and I found him living in Hawaii, single and still so cute. So I e-mailed cute boy and he responded. I left the exchange at “Hi, how are ya” and a few weeks later went home to my dad in Detroit. My life was in shambles, I was heartbroken and drinking way to much to be normal. I needed to go home. What’s a girl to do when she’s lonely and drunk? E-mail cute boy back!

Eventually, we started talking on the phone for hours at a stretch. One night, we were watching the playoffs together and drinking pretty heavily. DrunkCute boy decided that was his moment and bought me a one-plane ticket to Hawaii, leaving in four days. I sobered up, packed my stuff and hopped on the plane, more than a little apprehensive. But when I got here, that all went away:

He was perfect! We however were on the wrong road. We weren’t living very healthy and it showed:

We decided we’d start getting healthy. I never suffered from disordered eating, but I did suffer from lack of self-worth and probably alcoholism. So, we began with food. We started eating more veggies and chicken breasts, more brown rice, less white. Six months later, cute boy became fiance:

We spent the next year moving to a new place, getting new jobs and adding to our family:

This is how Roberta Jean weaseled her way into our hearts 🙂 We continued trying to get healthier, adding in frozen diet meals for fast food and Subway for chain places. In March of 09, we decided that we were best buddies and that we crack each other up:

So we made it legal in front of some co-workers and friends:

Around that time, we found a book about mastering our metabolisms and learned about weightlifter diets. We work hard, followed the plan and dropped a lot of weight, but the second we let loose, we put a lot of that weight back on. Then, we read Tosca Reno’s book and healthy living blogs like this one and this one. These three resources were super-influentual regarding how we ate and cared for ourselves. By Christmas, we were feeling and looking great:

We kicked the smoking and the drinking (just for a little while. We’ll start again when we feel like we’re ready) and started working out. We got back into relationships with God (without whom, none of this would be possible) Now, what you see is what you get!

We’ve tailored our eating and working out to what our bodies respond to. I love having a healthy living blog but we’re also busy people too. We stretch ourselves thin by going going going all the time and we end up eating take out or (gasp, the horror!) eating McDonalds 😀 All in all, I like the fullness I feel from having the Lord in my life, I love the comfort and companionship that I have from marrying and being with my best friend and I’m grateful for the habits that I’ve instilled in our lives and the fun we got out of our systems have had.

Hopefully, I’m no longer the faceless blogger 🙂 I’d like to meet all of you too, faceless (and non-faceless) readers! So feel free to say hi.