New Diet

05/02/2020

Our Health and Knee Issues During the Covid-19


Engaged! 1975

I had dropped out of college after completing my junior year, met Bill, and here I was meeting all of his family.

We thought we experienced about every facet of the worst during the Pandemic. I’ve written about my mom’s passing (where I learned Funeral Homes are not considered essential), traveling and surgery in the past few blogs. Just when we thought it was about over – for us that is. So this post is about how we are fairing with our overall health and now our next issue – the need for another surgical procedure.

When I started college, I had to figure out how to “protect” my heart.  I developed rheumatic fever when I was five. I was told I had to take penicillin for the rest of my life and I should NOT “stress my heart” by running. Imagine telling that to a five year old!

But when I went to college, I was no longer under a doctor’s care. My roommate was a nursing student and an athlete.  It didn’t take me long to learn how important exercise is for a heart. So I began to workout – after all, I had to lose the Freshman 15 when I returned home for the summer. Once I began to run, I was quickly addicted. BUT my mom warned me I would wear my knees out….What do mother’s know? I said you can’t wear out your knees. How how naive I was….”Mother’s are always right” – eventually we see that truth. Continue Reading

12/15/2017

Bill’s One Year Anniversary


Bill went to bed after we logged his 364th day of food, exercise and weight losses (and gains – he went up a pound or two here and there). We used the Lose It App and recommend it. Very easy to use once you get the hang of it!

It’s hard to believe it was a year ago when Bill received devastating news: He was at risk for a massive heart attack and/or had heart disease. WOW, what a shock since he was asymptomatic. I guess that’s why it’s called the silent killer. We’ve written a number of posts about the diagnosis and how he’s learned to live and THRIVE with it. The “Table of Contents” is found here if you missed the posts.  I wrote about it in my personal blog as we tried to keep this one for our travel adventures….but then, this was an adventure, just a different type!

I decided to “interview” Bill for this post – after he said he didn’t want to write it! 

What’s the first thing you thought of as you approached your one year anniversary? “I’m alive!”

Hallelujah! That was our goal and he’s hit a home run!

But maybe he didn’t understand exactly where I was coming from. I asked him, “Remember when we started this journey and I asked if you could do this (eat a heart healthy diet, exercise more vigorously, and manage his stress) for the rest of your life? You replied, “Ask me in six months.” I did ask him at six months and he said there was no turning back. But now at a year, I wanted to know more.

It was an ordeal to drastically change how we lived, ate, worked out, managed stress – while not thinking you could drop dead any minute! But he did it and is THRIVING! Continue Reading

10/05/2017

Are we living the dream? Part 2


Based upon the responses we received from our last post, YES we are living THE dream! While it wasn’t ever our dream, as it began to unfold, it became a DREAM of a lifestyle! We are loving it, no doubt. We have visited amazing locations, met wonderful people and reconnected with friends and family. In part, we are traveling because we can’t agree where to “settle down.” We are visiting a few places that have potential and at the end, we usually give it a thumbs down….

Who knew there was such a place? And not named after the former President or his wife….Trivia tidbit: It was named in honor of the sixth governor of New York, DeWitt Clinton!

In this post, we want to share the reality of our lifestyle and say that it isn’t exactly what we thought it would be as well as the downsides of it. Again, it’s not for everyone as it takes a lot of flexibility and patience to maneuver through the various obstacles in our way….we survived the biggest of all, our Continue Reading

05/03/2017

Reflections on our 2017 Winter Travels


We are traveling in part, to be honest, because we can’t agree where we want to live! As we celebrated our 42nd wedding anniversary (4/11/1975), we can say we don’t do anything without praying over it and both of us agreeing to it. Of course, it may seem obvious, why not settle in Fredericksburg near our daughter and family? We certainly do want to be near them, but we lived in Fredericksburg for 10 years. When we moved there, it was a sleepy rural county. We loved it! But by the time we left, it was becoming a boom town. And now, it has outgrown its roads. It is just one big traffic jam! We recently heard a sermon titled, “Never say never!” But Bill does tend to say, we’ll never live there….time will tell.

So what do we really want? We love mountains for challenging hikes and clean mountain air – but we could never handle the winters there. And really, driving winding and steep roads isn’t comfortable for us. We also love the beach. But what great beach area doesn’t have a busy season? And remember, we don’t like traffic. This winter we experienced EVERYTHING we love about our full-time lifestyle. Continue Reading

04/21/2017

Heart Disease: Metabolic Syndrome


We are a bit behind in our Travel posts. But we have been a bit consumed with our health concerns. Fortunately, it looks like we are on the road to recovery and hope our journey down this road might encourage others to have the best health possible!

Debbie L's avatarReal life....

IMG_0851 April 2017. Bill has lost over 40 pounds and I’ve lost over 20. We didn’t try to do this, just changing our diet caused the weight to literally melt off! Our before picture is below.

Have you ever heard of Metabolic Syndrome? If you are like us, we never did, until December 22, 2016 when Bill was informed he had it. He was still reeling from the fact the week prior, he was told he was at risk for a massive heart attack and/or had heart disease. Like everyone who gets such a scary diagnosis, you never imagine it could happen to you.

In one way, it was a relief! It explained why Bill couldn’t lose a pound when he tried! We are a very active couple, living a lifestyle that demands activity. Or else, we chose this lifestyle because we love activity!

We love the outdoors, either to take…

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04/14/2017

Heart Disease: Entering a New Country


Ah, it’s Good Friday and here I am, finalizing our latest post about living with Heart Disease. Maybe it is linked – Our Lord and Savior gives us new life and life eternal.
Bill’s diagnosis has also given us new life – but it’s only temporal. We do believe God created us for good, to bring Him Glory and Honor in all we do and how we live. We both feel we have been given a second chance to fully enjoy what time we have left on this earth! Happy Easter and we hope everyone makes it to church or a service sometime this weekend as we celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord! Our Lord came down from Glory to sacrifice His earthly body so those who believe in His sacrifice and all that it means, may have eternal life with Him! Isn’t that worthy of celebration?

Debbie L's avatarReal life....

Bill often said he felt like he was in a new country when he began to eat a Heart Healthy diet. The shock has finally subsided since he learned he had heart disease and Metabolic Syndrome on December 15, 2016, details here in case you missed it. Thankfully, Bill is a strong-willed person. When he decides he is going to do something, he does it, and usually in a big way.  He learned to accept it, written about here, and decided he would do whatever he had to do to overcome any obstacles that might hinder his lifestyle. The next step he had to go through was to decide how to live with it, written here.

Now let’s fast forward to April 11, 2017. The day finally arrived for us to meet again with Dr. Jeffrey Askew. I was very positive, but Bill’s nature was to be…

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03/30/2017

Heart Disease


From my personal blog. Our winter travels are officially over, but still have a few more blog posts. This post was what we were coping with all winter as we learned about heart disease and learned a new way of eating and better exercising. We also learned a lot about traveling although it’s been 3 1/2 years! We know one thing, we’re going to keep on keepin’ on!

Debbie L's avatarReal life....

7 (1) Aren’t we the picture of health? Photo taken August 2016 Is it just us, or has anyone else noticed something interesting about pharmaceutical commercials these days? They show a good-looking couple, middle-aged (whatever that is to the viewer) out having fun: bike riding, playing golf, playing with their child or grandchild, walking and holding hands in a romantic setting? (Maybe like this picture?) Then the commercial begins, “See your doctor about taking XYZ drug.” Then in fine print and a VERY low and fast voice, you are warned that this drug could cause paralysis, blindness, heart attack, or some other more serious cause of death? And then as soon as that is over, a law firm advertises: ”If you have ever taken such and such drug and you have cancer, it’s been determined that drug caused the cancer and we will sue for $millions for YOU!” What’s with this?

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01/19/2017

Virginia to Jacksonville (Winter 2017, Part 1)


We loved our walks on a fabulous trail around this beautiful lake. It looked different every day but this was the best day!

This is the day the Lord has made!  We loved our walks on a fabulous trail around this beautiful lake. It looked different every day but this was the best day, blue skies and sunshine.

If you read our Reflections on December 2016, we had a bit of a rough December. We failed to mention on top of everything else how cold it was – but then, it’s been a cold winter about everywhere! But living in a motor home isn’t ideal for temperatures in the low 20s and let along the teens.  It was so cold, we had to bring in our slides for a few days to have less square footage to heat. The day we were pulling out (we had them opened for a few days) the moisture turned to ice in the slide covers!  This was the third year of RVing and spending December in Fredericksburg, Virginia. So this was the third year we had to literally “flee” a freezing winter storm, they are now naming them so this was Helena. Continue Reading