Carbs

April 23, 2019

For the most part, I think we eat pretty healthy. We don’t have much junk food in our house other than pretzels and some candy that takes forever to get eaten. We don’t eat out often, and when we do, it’s rarely fast food. But we are (ahem!) older, and the metabolism isn’t what it used to be. Linda is religious about exercising; I used to be, but am finding with early morning meetings three times a week, I don’t get in the workouts I need. 

On a long drive home this evening, we got to talking about our health; we don’t take it for granted as we once did. Our son Matthew started on a low carb diet awhile back, and combined with his jiu jitsu workouts, has lost about fifty pounds. While we’re not likely to take up jiu jitsu, a bit more exercise and a change in diet might help us shed the extra pounds that tended to accumulate over the years. Forty nine years ago when I married Linda, I was as tall as I am now (maybe even taller if we figure in the shrinkage factor), but weighed only 135 pounds. Yeah, I was that skinny. Nearly fifty years later, I packed on that same fifty pounds Matt lost. I discovered that when I top 175, I get heartburn, and in the last year, it feels like arthritis is testing out my wrists and ankles. I need to get moving more.

I could chalk all this up to old age, except for my mother. She’s 96, and whenever I ask her if anything hurts, she pauses to consider before responding, “No...nothing hurts.”

“NOTHING?” I ask. 

“No, nothing.”

She has twenty six years on me, and no aches and pains. Sure, she’s slowed down considerably, but nothing hurts. Genetics is on my side! And so is my wife. We decided together to monitor our carb intake, encourage each other with exercise, and she promised to feed me smaller portions at dinner. It can’t hurt anything, and we might even like our new look and feel. I am thankful tonight for good genes, for good health, for research that shows us healthy life patterns, and for a wife who encourages me in all this. I’ll keep you posted.