So, why the name "The WAFF Journey"? Well, It's short for The weird ass freaky food journey. Which happens to be the journey my husband Josh and I started on a year or so ago. It has been hard at times, very educational and very freaky and weird.
A little back story, a few years ago my husband Josh was diagnosed with RA (Rheumatoid arthritis). I, myself, broke my shoulder ball joint into pieces and tore my labrum several years ago, resulting in surgery to repair both. So, we both had our issues, both had tons of inflammation, we became more sedentary and the weight added on. I should also tell you, we LOVE food! All kinds of food, all kinds of spices, we love to go out to eat and to cook at home. We would consider ourselves 100% FOODIES! However, Josh (the husband) was getting horrible flare ups with his RA. I also had so much inflammation, my shoulder and neck were like solids rocks. We were both tired and exhausted all the time. We got to the point enough was enough!
We started with exercise. I started simple with walking everyday through the neighborhood. Josh started joining me. We then started hiking every weekend. We would hike then find a vineyard afterwards and have a glass of wine as a treat. (still love this treat)! Then we had a friend that invited us to Hot yoga. Yeah for me that was a big No thank you! I had no desire to sweat my balls off excessively (so to speak, since I am female) while exercising. I live in the south just exercising outdoors is enough for me. However, Josh on the other hand wanted to go (more power to him) and he loves it, plus he still has his balls, apparently you cant actually sweat them off. LOL! Then we both joined a gym together. We had some set backs but now we are very active.
Along with the exercise came the watching what we were eating. Josh Loves him some Podcasts. He would come home and tell me about a podcast he listened to regarding eating and foods regularly. I am a reader and love books, so I started reading about health and foods. ( I will eventually list them, if you have the desire to learn things about healthy eating, or listen to podcasts about it ) Then, I joined a health program at work that educates and monitors your exercise and foods. So, we started eliminating things from our diet, the first was probably processed sugars. From there down the rabbit hole of healthy eating we went (it was more of a gigantic pit). We focused on farm raised organic foods as the largest part of our consumption at first. We felt better, we lost weight, we were doing great. However, neither of us were pain free. So we continued to educate ourselves.
Skip to now - We are Vegan! We are not the type of Vegan's that will condemn you for eating meat. If that's what you want please enjoy it, that doesn't bother us. We made this decision for ourselves for health purposes only. When we started this we had ALOT of conversations about it. Could we give up all those items we have loved for so long, the answer was yes in the end. OMG, I do miss cheese though!! Of all the things I thought I would miss I didn't expect cheese to be at the very tip top of my list. Let me move on....
We are now pain free (both of us) and 40 + pounds lighter than we used to be (again, both of us). We are still new to this part of our journey, but its going well. So, join us and read about our journey, our thoughts, what we eat and why we eat it. I will have recipes along the way both vegan and healthy non-vegan for your own weird ass freaky food journeys!
Bio about us:
Well, my husband is Josh and I am Melissa. We are a blended family with 4 amazing children and a son-in-law and two awesome grandkids. As you can tell we are not spring chickens anymore! Our oldest kid is 30 and the youngest 18. We both work full time jobs, so, we are working class people. We live in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia.
Just for reference my weight when I started this journey was 200 lbs and I am 5'7. I am now at 160 lbs (within my healthy weight). Josh started at 259 lbs and he is 5'11. He is now at 217 lbs. This is our Blog together as I think its important to share his journey and his own challenges, research, thoughts with RA and everything else as well as my own journey.
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