Another key to Tamela leading a healthy life is resisting temptation. The Manns’ five children are all grown now, but when they lived at home, they protested when their parents threw out the junk food in the house. “For me, it was just a matter of life and health. I thought everybody was supposed to [change with me]. I thought they loved me!” David says with a laugh. “But we’ve tried to cut the junk.” He says that now all the Mann children (and the couple’s eight grandchildren) are working on eating healthfully, too.
And they didn’t just stop with the food, Tamela and David both focused on their drink intake as well.
When the Manns get off track from time to time—as everyone does on the quest for health—their first step is to look at what they drink. “You don’t realize that we drink a lot of our sugar: in our sodas, our sugary juices,” David says. “I just tell people: Cut back off the juice and sodas.”
And it’s not just David and Tamela watching liquids with excess sugary calories. Their children and grandchildren are curbing their intake, too. “The moms dilute the juices [with water],” Tamela says. “If they have lemonade, we put a lot of ice in it, to help cut back.”
The couple also exercises regularly to help the pounds stay off. It’s a husband and wife effort with Tamela. Growing old happily together has a lot to do with how healthy you are, inside and out.