HUSBAND-AND-WIFE WEIGHT LOSS A DEVOTED COUPLE WENT FROM FIT TO OVERWEIGHT TO BACK TO A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE— WITH THE HELP OF WEIGHT LOSS SURGERY.
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harles and Diane Evans were high school athletes in northern New Jersey who first bonded over a shared love of sports. Forty years—and 35 years of marriage—later, they have recommitted themselves to health and fitness. Both underwent bariatric surgery last year at the Surgical Weight Loss Program at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJUH) Rahway. They’re happy they did. “It’s changed how we feel about ourselves, how we look at ourselves, how others look at us—all for the better,” says Charles.
BUILDING A LIFE “Charles wrestled in high school and I was on the track team,” says Diane. “We didn’t date then, but a couple of years afterwards Healthy Together
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we would run into each other occasionally when we both went back to the high school to help out with the teams.” The couple transferred to the same college to be together. They married in 1986 and had their first child the day before their first anniversary. It wasn’t long before they were busy with demanding careers and three young children. “Life catches up with you,” says Diane, who was commuting into Manhattan for her job with the Army Corps of Engineers. (Charles is a supervisor of field operations for the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs.) “We were sports parents, taking carloads of our kids and their friends to their various activities and games but not being very active ourselves. There wasn’t really time to cook and eat at home, so we started getting a lot of fast food.” They gained a lot of weight, and they tried various weight
Fall 2020
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