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| Valentine’s Day sunrise photo of the Caribbean Sea taken by Tom this morning while standing less than 10 feet from our veranda. |
Heartfelt Valentine’s wishes for all of our family and friends. This morning, Tom arose before sunrise waiting to take this extraordinary photo for me while I remained in restful slumber. This is truly the best Valentine’s gift I’ve ever received. Thanks, my love.
After a fun happy hour last night with our tourist neighbors from Canada, another couple we’ve befriended, we dined on our homemade pizza made using Polish not Italian sausage. It wasn’t quite the same, missing the familiar spices in the sausage that make pizza so tasty. Not having eaten all day, we devoured half of it leaving the remainder for tonight’s dinner.
While grocery shopping a few days ago, I’d purchased a whole coconut, wondering how we’d open it. With my limited way of eating, I was craving something sweet. The thought of eating fresh coconut got me salivating.
During last night’s happy hour festivities, we asked a resort employee if he could help us crack the coconut. He dashed off, moments later returning with a awe inspiring machete.
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| Helpful employee at LaruBeya cracking open my coconut. |
In a matter of seconds, he’d split the coconut. Unfortunately, as an inexperienced coconut buyer, I had purchased one with a crack it in. The employee explained that the meat would be dry and the milk unsafe to drink. I had hoped to use it to make coconut flour pancakes. Live and learn. We dumped the milk placing the two chunks in the fridge to deal with later.
As I peeked in the refrigerator this morning, seeing the leftovers wrapped in foil and the two chunks of coconut, impossible to remove from the shell after trying late last night, a sense of disappointment came over me, such sorry leftovers for Valentine’s dinner and no coconut meat. Oh well, no big deal. I tucked it away in my mind to “think about later.” We had chicken and beef in the freezer and could easily make a new dinner.
After our usual morning coffee on the veranda, checking our email and Facebook, it was time to wander over to the resort next door, Roberts Grove, a five minute walk along the beach so I could work out once again. We darted in and out of palm trees on the scenic walk along the beach. Me, in workout shoes and Tom, barefooted. He never ventures outdoors without shoes. It’s fun to see that he too, is falling into the Belizean way, barefoot and laid back.
Staying fit as we travel the world is important to me. Its not about “burning calories” which I’ve never found to be effective. Its about maintaining a level of fitness and well being to ensure my continuing good health, mobility, strength and endurance, many of which dwindle away as one approaches old age.
Turning 65 years old in a mere six days, February 20th, is a huge motivator for me. Since we left Minnesota on Halloween, I’ve only missed one week, that horrifying week without water in the little beach house. Once we moved here to LaruBeya on February 5th, I signed up next door (no health club here) to use their health club at $39 a month, as mentioned in a prior post.
My workout consists of a program I adopted from the book, The Smarter Science of Slim by Jonathan Bailor which extols the virtues of 1000 scientific studies done by researchers at Harvard as to why we need to eat more and exercise less (and smarter) utilizing the concert of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).
This concept along with the book Wheat Belly by Dr. William Davis, not only changed my life, now free of pain except for the testy shoulder on occasion but helped Tom lose 45 pounds which he has maintained after two cruises and many nights of dining out. I know I’ve mentioned these many times in the past but we would not have been able to travel the world prior to these startling life changes from eating this new way, now 18 months later.
Tom has never had interest in working out. He’s lost all this weight from diet alone. Now, living on the beach, its not hard to get in my preferred 10,000 steps of walking per day. I don’t nag or cajole Tom into doing more. Its entirely his decision, one I doubt he’ll choose to make.
In any case, my workouts continue leaving me feeling refreshed, renewed and energized. Although I only go to the gym twice a week for short periods, HIIT is an excruciated short period, as little as 10 minutes of torture. Once done, I wait 3-4 days to do it again, ideal with our current lifestyle.
As discussed many times in this blog, our diets continue to be a source of careful planning and sometimes difficult choices. Tom had planted himself in a comfy chair in the shade reading a book on his smart phone (we no longer have cell phone contract but use WiFi for data on our phones) while I’d work out. While standing at the desk at Robert’s Grove to collect the key to the workout room, I noticed three fancy Valentine’s Day menus spread out on the counter.
Thinking about the leftover pizza and impossible to shell coconut in the fridge, I called Tom over to peruse the menus. Pizza or filet mignon and lobster tail????
Filet and lobster won!!! We made the reservation for 7 PM tonight, Valentine’s night. All we do is show up at that desk at 6:45 tonight and the staff at Robert’s Grove will drive us the five miles to Maya Beach to their sister resort for dinner at the Singing Sands Resort and return us to our resort later in the evening.
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| Tom washed a boulder and then used it to crack my coconut, making it possible to eat. It wasn’t dry at all. Tonight’s dessert! |