Not Your Average Bill and Hilary Journal page

[Hilliebee]

Hi, I'm Hilary.
In 2002 I married Bill.
Here we were then:

For the record, I was 21, he was 26. Babies! I don't remember how much I weighed back then, because I had gotten rid of the bathroom scale after conquering (I thought) anorexia, so my best guess is 140. (I do know I had a 28" waist because that's what the measurement was for my wedding dress.) :-) I'm 5'9" and english. Bill weighed 245. He's also 5'9", and quite german as you can tell by his chin. :-)

Maybe over the course of time I will write our crazy life story in this journal, but for now, since this is about our lifestyle/fitness stuff, I'll just say that since we got married, life got crazy, and now, at ages 31 and 36 respectively, we are taking our health back by "going primal".

Here we are shortly after our second child was born, the beginning of 2008 -

I weighed at least 265 in this picture... Bill was probably 310.
Ouch.

Bill often said he felt like he had reverse anorexia... he was a very fat person who saw himself as a moderately in shape person. I, on the other hand, was a very fat person who knew I was a very fat person and that equals a lot of bad brain stuff.

So... shortly after that last pic of us was taken winter 2008 I joined a gym and hit the cardio hard. I lost 10 lbs in 4 months and I HATED every second of it. I did not change my eating habits at all. The whole thing sucked. In April of that year I quit the gym and decided to embrace my fat self. I bought all new clothes in my real size, which was something like 22-24. Ouch. Bill was quite content being his big fat self. We were fat and happy. We thought.

So then, in 2010, our baby was a toddler, and we were back to getting adequate sleep, and I decided it was time to do something about my fatness, so I started eating better the conventional way and taking long walks with the kids and playing at the park... in about a month I lost 10 lbs but I was so, so hungry. I hated it. Beginning of summer that year I started Weight Watchers. I loved the structure of the WW website and all the recipes there, and I felt very IN CONTROL of my diet and exercise. Just long walks still, but that was all I could manage on my restricted diet! By default, Bill lost weight during my WW days because he enjoyed (sort of) the food and would eat it right along with me... but he also hit the gas station for candy bars and snack cakes before work QUITE OFTEN and McDonald's on his way home every other day "just for a snack."

I followed WW pretty successfully by CW standards for about 8 months. Here we are in the fall of 2010, after I had lost maybe 25 lbs on WW:
I was probably 220 here, and Bill was probably 295.

Shortly thereafter Bill decided he needed to loose weight so he started tracking points with me, and he got down to 270. I got down to 208.10 on WW. Sad that I know the decimal point, ain't it?
Here he is at 270:
Here I am at 208.10 (lol!):

And then, as you can probably guess, we got REALLY TIRED of micromanaging our diet and exercise, even with the great micromanaging website WW has to offer. So we both quit counting points and just kept with the basics of CW dieting. And so I'm sure you know what happened next. Bill gained and got right back up to 300. I gained right back up to 230 and I got miserably sick! Last fall/winter I had strep 4 time, countless courses of antibiotics, bad blood tests, inflammation, the flu, and countless colds. I was finally diagnosed with severe adrenal fatigue syndrome, and my doctor wanted to put me on a sabattical from work so I could heal.

I began to look for answers to why I was so sick and ways to heal adrenal fatigue. I decided after much research that I needed to remove stressors from my life that I could remove, and sugar/caffeine/processed food are all stressors, so I removed those and started to feel remarkably better. Went on a supplement regime to help with the depression/anxiety/adrenal crap and felt remarkably better. Then a friend told me about Primal Blueprint, and I read the book, and I thought "What the heck?! I'm so close to eating this way anyway, I might as well try it!" And so I quit eating whole grains and THEN I FINALLY felt like my old self again.

And I started loosing weight again!

A few weeks ago Bill weighed himself and was so discouraged to realize that he had gained back everything he had lost on WW. He was so sad, it was sad! He was pretty determined to DO SOMETHING about this, so I encouraged him to "go primal" with me. He did. And here we are.

It's been about 6 weeks since I've been totally living this way, and 2 weeks since he has, and he's lost 10 lbs, I've lost 15. I'm off my medication that I was on for six years. I'm down, as of right now, to a size 12, from a 16. I also quit my super stressful super crazy job to come home and be a mom. We are so happy about all of this!

My av pic is the most recent one of I have of me, but pretty soon we'll take some more pictures to keep up with our progress. My goals for embracing this way of life are to loose weight and be physically and mentally healthy and strong. His goals are to loose weight and not look like a fat expletive. :-) Neither of us want our children to grow up with the same food baggage we grew up with, so while they still thoroughly enjoy Cheerios, they also eat loads of whole fruits and vegetables and actually prefer meat as a meal more than anything else.

It's a family thing. And it's going to change generations of eating disorders, because overeating and being fat is just as much of a disorder as undereating and being skinny.

I should know!

[Hilliebee]

This is, after all, a lifestyle change.

Which takes time.

Back in the day before we were married we were both smokers. We quit together cold turkey in February of the year we married. It took awhile to get used to the lifestyle of being a non-smoker. Likewise, it will take awhile to get used to the lifestyle of being primal.

But I think we're doing a pretty good job of it, all things considered. Bill already looks more manly, imo. I don't know what I look more like, tho' last night he did tell me "you look pretty today!" which I'll take. :-)

The kids asked for chicken and bacon for breakfast today. That's a vast improvement over chocolate chex!

I wish I had more time for physical play. I wish I live in So Cal again so I could go to the beach for a long, long walk. I miss that. I don't miss the people or the crime or the traffic or the high cost of living, but I do miss the beach, and the way you could get outside pretty much any day of the year and go do something physically exerting and mentally stimulating at the same time. Here, well, we had heavy rain almost all week. I do not find the inside walls of my house very stimulating.

Bah humbug.

[belinda]

Congratulations on finding the PB!

Can you find someplace inside you can go for a walk? A mall maybe? Don't shop your way around it