“I eat the same thing every day.”
When Carol Ventimiglia Weitz was hunting for wedding dresses in the early ’70s, she wanted one that emphasized her trim waist.
“I felt really good — like a million dollars,” she says of her big day.
Nearly half a century on, she still looks fabulous in the satin and lace number which, though a little yellowed after being stored in a garage, fits like a glove.
The 73-year-old retired secretary from Colonia, NJ, is proud of her 5-foot-4, 124-pound figure she has worked to maintain since getting married in October 1972 at 26 to husband, Stu.
“I’m the sort of person who, if I have one doughnut, I have to take six,” says Weitz, a mother of two and grandmother of five. “I need to watch what I eat and pretty much eat the same foods every day.”
Her typical diet consists of plain oatmeal or cottage cheese for breakfast, peanut butter and crackers for lunch with a dinner of vegetables and beans. “I eat two to three apples a day, which I slice and dip into diet raspberry or strawberry Jell-O crystals — my version of a low-calorie jelly apple!” adds Weitz.
“I don’t think my diet is restrictive, because I’ve never been a big meat eater,” she says. “But if I go out for dinner, I’ll order chicken or fish.”
Although she feels “flabbier” these days since an injury curtailed her daily treadmill running habit, wearing her wedding gown again has boosted her confidence, especially as there was no issue zipping it up at the back.
“The only thing is, it makes me wonder where 47 years have gone,” she says. “It just doesn’t seem that long ago.”