This blog is to catalog my family's journey to health, wellness and fitness. A little about us: we are a family of five...Me, also known as Josh, my wife, Jessica, and our beautiful daughters, DJ (11), JT and AT (2). I am 28 years old and work full time in the mental health field, aka a ton of stress. My wife works far more than I do because she primarily cares for our kids and works part time. She also strategically puts together all of our menus and cooks just about every night (more to come about that). Jessica and I met in a curious way but not uncommon way- through craigslist! Neither of us were looking for a long term relationship, until the third date when it was apparent this was going to be a long term deal. It has been nearly 5 years now and it just keeps getting better.
What didn't really get better was our weights, fitness, wellness and overall health. And really, how could it? We were both raised in families that didn't put nutrition first. Jessica's family-literally-had fast food nearly every single night for dinner. If it wasn't fast food, it was processed food. My family, on the other hand, rarely ate out because we were a working class family. We had meals like SOS, tuna helper, hamburger helper, pasta, pasta, and pasta with canned veggies and white bread. I also had no sense of portions. I also ate every time I felt hungry, or mad, or sad.
But, that was then. This is now and I'm an adult. I wont lie, I've started "life style changes," and diets before and they didn't last long. Jessica and I woke up on January 1st, 2011- we took a look at ourselves and found people we didn't like- we had just eaten a weeks worth of calories in one eve (which wasn't too far off of our normal nightly routine) and were headed down. I looked at myself and pictured the future of sitting on couch watching my children play and watching my life go away. We didn't plan it out like we had before, with a "special" diet and a special start date. We woke up on 1/2/2012 and started doing something different...
