Good morning, nice to meet you

I'm Nicole, and this is the story of how my husband and I became part-time vegetarians.

At 28 and 29, respectively, our doctors wrote: elevated triglycerides… "excuse me, tri-what?" and elevated cholesterol can prescribe… "no no no, I'm too young to be taking medications," said the husband. So how do we fix these issues: watch what you eat and exercise. That simple right? What are we watching for? Oh, cholesterol and sodium are sneaky sneaky creatures, they make everything delicious so avoid that. PS, all meats have THE SAME AMOUNT OF CHOLESTEROL. Have a lovely day.

…meat. My husband was very serious, as was this situation, about eliminating the meat. But I love LOVE all the meats, well minus the squishy sea creatures, but turducken, yeah we've tried it. So what to do, what to do? Basically it was a near cold turkey situation. I don't have to tell you whats left when you take the meat from your plate, those "sides", the vegetables. Adding meat to my dinners was more work than I wanted to do, especially now that we were sustaining our once-meat-consuming bodies with all those chicken and turkey meatball dinners with loads of peeled, sliced, and what started as steamed vegetables.

…sauce. Cover them in sauce, we'll never know the difference. That missing piece of chicken was the difference. The meat in that red sauce was the difference. And come on, how many steamed vegetables can you eat? Luckily we love black pepper and crushed red pepper flakes. And bread, thank you bread for always being there when I need you.

…roast. Roast the meat = delicious. Roast the vegetables, surprise = D to the E to the L I C I O U S (thank you Fergie for that one). My personal savior, the roasted vegetable. It's quirk, that one hour in the oven after you've washed, chopped, poked, and greased it up (with olive oil, come on this started with high cholesterol and I can't even tell what grease does to me, we've just met). But here comes Spring, and around here it brought along it's sister Summer.

…blend. Soup! We love soup and you can make tons of it at a time on the stove without all the 450 degree oven heat radiating throughout the house. But blend those roasted vegetables too, winter soup is the best, right?

…feel the burn. I've always loved the sound of that phrase, but in my adult-ish life, have never been one to seek the burn. But thank goodness it's now time, before it's too late time. So the first part of our weightless journey (I a bit miss watching The Biggest Loser, but wasn't into it after Jillian left). Running. My husband and I used to be pretty fit people, if you imagine active teenagers eating pizza bread and burgers and being fit. Once college hit, in or on I should say, came the: freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, teacher credential, and master's 15… we'll call it 30 pounds. Couch to 5K is what we used. A lovely little app that has your follow a nine week running schedule of gradual increases until you are running 5K in 30 minutes with warm-up and cool down walks. Goodbye to an easy 15 pounds a piece.

Next came all that late fall-early winter darkness. Enter Jillian Michaels (She's back and in my living room, yay!). If you're not into gyms, workout videos (yes, same Susanne Somers situation) can be a nice route. You can embarrass yourself in your own home. Worked like a charm, goodbye to another 10-ish pounds.

Another round of blood work at the lab and things are looking good. There were a few more ups and downs involved but I will spare you those details now. We have so much to talk about and we're already a year behind. My plan is to share our meals and activity here. We're pretty much in a maintaining state now, though we certainly have pounds to spare (I'm talking to you, jellyrolls. And if I hit my batwing one more time).

Very nice to meet you, see you soon.