 Howdy, my name's William Rumley. I'm the director of the Fort Worth Municipal Court. Thank you for spending a few minutes with us today. I'm going to talk with a couple of clerks who are going to talk about health and wellness and the things they've done to improve their health and wellness and share that information with us today. So first I'm going to let them introduce themselves, so first Jackie. Hi, my name is Jackie Alexander. I am a senior municipal court clerk and I have been with the city for almost 20 years. Ray? My name is Ray Gulsby. I'm also a senior municipal court clerk and I've only been here one year less than Jackie. Excellent. Well, again, thank you all for spending a few minutes this morning and really appreciate your contribution as employees. Today we're going to talk a little more something personal and that's related to health and so each of you have recently, I think, made some adjustments or changes, maybe in lifestyle or whatever. So just today we wanted to talk about that, share that and maybe inspire some other staff and to kind of do the same. So Jackie, if you don't mind starting off and just talk about your own journey. Well, my journey started pre-COVID. I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes and I was about a hundred pounds overweight at the time. My doctor gave me a whole bunch of medicine that I just didn't want to spend the rest of my life taking all that medicine. So then COVID hit and once COVID hit, I was still working in a building. Nobody else really was. So I just decided I'm going to take advantage of being alone. I started moving more. I started walking more. I started doing pushups. I had all this space in the court and no one was here. So it just became my own personal track. So I started doing that, eating less. And then I joined a class with the city called at that time it was called Naturally Slim. But it's now changed to Wonder and it teaches you how to eat in smaller portions. It teaches you to not pick sugars, to pick natural fruits and natural sugars. And that's helped a lot. So just by portion control, moving more, I am at almost 82 pounds lost. Wow. Outstanding. Well, congratulations on that. Thank you. Did you get support, you think, from the city and from staff? I did. Actually, on the Naturally Slim, the new Wonder, you can download the app on your phone and you have to check in weekly and make goals every week. Plus, I had people that I was working with virtually who would check on me. I had my family members. I had other friends throughout the city that was in a walking club. So it just brought me closer to more people in the city and closer to my friends and family as well. Well, that's outstanding. Very good. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your testimony and the information today. Just, I guess, beyond kind of your goal losing weight and that type of thing. Just overall, how has that helped you in your day to day life? Oh, you wouldn't believe that. I'm enjoying buying new clothes. I can tell you that now. But my joints feel better. I don't feel tired. I'm sleeping good. I'm there to do extracurricular activities with my son that I couldn't do in the past before losing the weight. So it's just, it just did a complete 180 for me. I completely turned everything around. I don't focus on just eating food all the time. It's other things in life besides eating. So if you can join any of the city programs, weight loss, just research them yourself and see which one is good for you and you'll pay off in the end. Excellent. Well, thank you, Jackie. Thank you very much. So Ray, kind of same thing. Give us from your perspective, kind of your story, your situation. I see. Mine was pretty different from Jackie's. I wasn't diagnosed with anything. I just, you know, just I just decided, I think it was in last August that I was ready to, you know, make a change and start losing weight. I didn't go, I didn't join any special program with the city or anywhere else. I just came up with something that I felt would work for me. Okay. Let's see. I just cut out, you know, a lot of things like fried foods, like nothing deep fried. I tried to focus on things that would fill me up but not be full of calories. Let's see. I also tended to, you know, I was I was always really bad about drinking sodas. I cut those out. All I drink is water pretty much. Although, you know, I'm not a tea person and I'm not a coffee person. From what I've read, as long as you're drinking black coffee and tea without sugar, you're fine. Caffeine is actually really good at boosting your metabolism. Since I don't like either of those things, I actually just take a caffeine pill every morning. But, you know, those are, you know, but if, you know, if that's something that you like, that's something you can still have as long as you don't fill your coffee with cream and sugar. Okay. So the kind of extras, right? That we all, yeah. Those are the things that tend to, you know, mess people up a lot. I got like, personally, I've never liked salads and I didn't suddenly start eating salads just because I would say to want to, that I was gonna lose weight. I just went online. I found, you know, a slew of, you know, low calorie recipes, 98% of which looked terrible to me. But, you know, there's thousands of them. So even if you only like 2% of the recipes out there, that's still more than enough to provide you with lots of variety in your diet. Great. So again, kind of the same question. So what are kind of the benefits outside of, you know, maybe meeting your weight loss goal or anything that you feel like? I have far more energy than I used to have. I also am a lot happier than I was, you know, and nothing, you know, and it's not because in addition to that, lots of other great things have started happening. It's, I just feel a lot more positive about, you know, everything, you know, I don't, you know, it's like the weight, the physical weight was weighing me down emotionally, I think. And, you know, I feel a lot better having lost it. Well, I want to thank you both for your testimonies. I think that's great. I would ask you one more question, which is so, you know, a lot of people start and then maybe they can't keep going. So first, Jackie, for you kind of, I think you maybe missed us a little bit, but what helped you to stay on track and maintain that, if you will, original momentum? I don't want to go back to where I was. I don't want to go back to 80 pounds ago and feeling horrible, not being able to sleep, taking medicine. Plus my son is my life right now and he's in football. So being active with him and trying to eat right and be a good role model for him is what's keeping me going forward. Absolutely. Ray, what would you say to that question? Let's see. I think, you know, for folks, one of the reasons I got discouraged, because this is not the first time I've lost weight. I lost weight once before, got really, you know, to a place where I was very happy with. But I had, in order to get to that point, I had made myself miserable. I was starving myself and, you know, I just, all I thought about all day long was the fact that I couldn't eat anything. And of course, you know, you can't maintain that. You know, so one of the things that I had made sure of when I decided I was going to lose weight this time was that I was not going to do anything that was making me miserable. There's, you know, you know, plenty of, you know, I did a little more research online, a lot more research online to find things that would work for me, not all of it did, but more than enough of it did to, for me to find things that, you know, I could eat so that I was, you know, if I'm hungry, I eat something. You know, I just don't eat a candy bar, necessarily. Makes sense. You know, there's, you know, but, you know, if you're, if lots of people like celery sticks and carrot sticks, which is great for them, that's not me. You know, but, you know, almost everybody likes fresh fruit of one kind or another. You know, that's a, that's really good. Let's say pretzels, popcorn that's not slathered in butter are fine. You know, things like that, you know, but yeah, the most important thing I've found is to diet without, you know, making it something that, you know, you have to think about what you're eating all the time. You just, I just found things that work for me and that's it. And because they work for me, I can maintain it. It's not something that I have to ever, okay, you know, say, okay, I've lost the weight. Now I'm going to go back to the way it was. That's never going to work. So definitely sounds like y'all made permanent lifestyle changed, if you will, but something that works with your lifestyle. Two different stories, but yet kind of both a very positive outcome. So I want to thank y'all for spending a few moments today to talk to us and maybe we've inspired some other folks and, you know, I think you have here within the court and definitely now we can get word out to some other folks. So there are some great programs out there in the city. There's Verda Health and some other programs, Jackie reference that can help. But as Ray said, there's other opportunities if you're uncomfortable with that, or maybe that's not the way you want to go. So with that being said, thank you, Jackie. Thank you, Ray. Congratulations outstanding job. And thank you for your time today.