Adventures in Healthy Living -- Losing 20 pounds in a month

My husband has decided he wants to enlist in the Army. When he decided this, he weighed himself. According to the Army's website, he is within their weight limits for his age, but overweight according to his height. So he wants to lose 20 lbs in a month.

I have already told him this isn't healthy. According to my research, 1-2 lbs a week is healthy weight loss. If you lose more than that, you are losing muscle and water which come back as soon as your diet is over. But I did find an article that should give him sufficient hope to lose 20 lbs in a month, while teaching him lifestyle changes that will make him healthier and help him to lose weight in a healthy way. Whether that is 8 lbs or 20 lbs, I hope he's happy with himself at the end of the month. Although, I suspect the weight limits posted on the Army website are what you must maintain after basic, rather than what you have to attain before going to basic.

I can't blame him for being excited and trying to prepare himself ahead of time, though. In fact, I'm very proud of him. He's showing much wiser and healthier preparation than my cousin/ aunt/ whoever it was in my family that got her stomach stapled and ate an entire cake the night before to "prepare" for not being able to eat that much afterwards. . .

And he started preparing for it when he decided to enlist, so he's been more active, eating smaller portions and drinking mostly water for a couple days now.

So, I am doing tae boe with my hubby and helping him practice for PT and trying to guide him in modifying his eating habits so that he will be healthier and let me tell you, I am thrilled! No, I'm not worried about his weight. I think he looks magically delicious. But I'm excited that he and I can get healthier together. I know I need to lose weight. I still have 10-15 pounds of baby weight hanging on for dear life, but its hard to make the time. Well, that's not quite true. The truth is, its easier to make the time to do this for me when I tell myself I'm doing this for him, so this will help us both. I want my hubby to be around forever and I want him to be healthy while he's growing old with me and I want to be healthy as I grow old with him, too.

Day 1 of taebo, I made it through almost all of the basic taebo video. If I had known just how close I was to finishing it, I would have pushed through it, but I wimped out. Joey finished it. We'll do it again tomorrow and I'm going to do it all then. And I'm also going to wear a bra. That jumping up and down part really hurt. . .

So far, Joey's been trying to lose weight for about a week and he says he's lost about 8 pounds. I guess its possible since he used to drink mostly soda and now he's drinking all water. He's also been a lot more active and has reduced his portion sizes and is eating smaller meals more frequently. He's cut out most of the sugar he used to eat and is eating much more healthily. I guess he might be able to lose 20 pounds in a month and as long as he is doing it healthily, that's ok with me.