Seventy-Eight year old Ernestine Shepherd is truly one of a kind. But her story is even more remarkable.
Shepherd says she did not start working out until she was 56 after not being comfortable wearing a bathing suit. Her diet changed from eating a regular breakfast, lunch and dinner to now eating 6 meals a day. She routinely starts her day at 2:30am and runs 10 miles (wow!), works out at the gym for a little over an hour, then teaches classes and conducts personal training sessions throughout the day. Some of us get tired just reading that.
“I’ll eat 10 egg whites scrambled. Drink 16 ounces of water and a handful of walnuts,” says Shepherd. “I have a certain song that I have to sing every morning.” Some of the lyrics are “Today, I’m happy and free / Nothing in this world is troubling me.”
“I had a sister. If you saw one, you saw the other,” Shepherd says. “She said to me, “We’re going to be in the Guinness Book of World Records and that’s another thing we can do together as sisters.”
Little did Ernestine know, but her sister was suffering from a brain aneurysm. “When she died, I didn’t want to do anything,” confessed Ernestine. “I ended up with high blood pressure, panic attacks, depression, acid reflux…it was awful way to live.”
The Incredible Journey of Ernestine Shepherd was originally published on blackdoctor.org
