Simple solutions to fit Real Life

In the beginning, I met and fell in love with a police officer. We married on the top of a mountain and lived the lives of a modern, blended family navigating jobs, custody schedules, naughty dogs and all kinds of ups and downs.

After nine years together, my police officer reached the end of a 20-year career and retired, but not before suffering through some debilitating side-effects of being “ON” eight hours each day, five days a week (not including overtime, which there were many many more hours of that!), for twenty years.

He dealt with debilitating migraines, diverticulitis, and colitis, and walked away with plaque in one of his major arteries and high blood pressure. Although he’s lucky to “just” have these issues, some of them will be with him for the rest of his life.

This is what precipitated The Change (I’m still workshopping the name, maybe something that sounds more dramatic and less like getting a first period), it was the major shift we made to our diets when his blood pressure said “DANGER, DANGER!”, his doctor said “here’s your prescription!” and my former-police officer said “no thx!”

This is the Readers Digest version, of course.

We (and I do mean WE; I am, like, a really good and supportive wife…plus, I wasn’t the picture of excellent health either) drastically altered the way we ate and cut back on sodium, sugar, refined carbs, and saturated fats. Instead of looking at all the things we couldn’t eat (Rest In someone else’s Pantry, brownies), we focused more on what we should eat and added vegetables, so many vegetables, fruits and whole grains. We practically bathe in olive oil now. We never counted our calories, but instead made sure to fill up on nutrient rich foods.

The outcome? Weight loss. Less aches and pains. No more migraines. No -itis flare ups. And Lower Blood Pressure! He is medication free and living a retirement he can enjoy.

My outcome looks similar but also includes memory improvement (comes in handy when I need to identify what movie we last saw that one actress in) and an almost disappearance of anxiety and depression I’d dealt with for years.

So, yeah. We sat at a health crisis crossroads and chose a path that was difficult but made all the difference. And now we want to tell the world how they can take that path too.