Women of a Certain Age
Okay, this post could come across as a little touchy, but I've been wondering this forever and have started to realize it might be true. What I mean is this: Once women reach a certain age (I'm thinking early 30s), whether they give birth to children or not, they tend to gain a little more weight and have a really hard time making it go down in the subsequent years.
Tom and I got married when I was 30. I had just turned 30 a month before the ceremony, and I was in reasonably good shape. This post isn't about specifics, but I'll just say that I was really comfortable wearing bikinis on my honeymoon in Hawaii. I wasn't thin, and I've had a "pooch" at my lower abdomen since I started the pill at 14, so I wasn't Sports Illustrated material, but I wasn't nearly as self-conscious about my body as I am now, 6 years later.
Over the last 6 years, several things have contributed to my gaining about... let's say 50 pounds:
- Tom and I are both ridiculously lazy and will give in to the merest suggestion of eating out instead of cooking, and for the years since we've moved up here (5), it's been mostly fast-food instead of nice restaurants because of budget constraints (fast food = fatty food, in case you hadn't heard).
- I went through a very high-stress period (because of which I ended up leaving my job) where I was definitely not eating or exercising or doing anything else healthy - I know I wasn't sleeping well, had tons of migraines around that time (ER visits - Yay!) - all that fun stuff surrounding basically having a nervous breakdown.
- A few of my medications (to prevent said migraines, mostly) actually have a side effect of GAINING WEIGHT. Ugh. How stupid is that?! *sigh* Yeah. And, I'm still on them. We tried several months ago to reduce my dosage and the headaches came back immediately. Not cool. So, I'm steadily STILL gaining weight from those.
- A few (okay, probably most, actually) of my medications have a side effect of fatigue. Like I really need help being lazy! Though I take the majority of them at night, I know they still affect my day-to-day energy levels. And, my metabolism wasn't great to start with.
- Depression. 'Nuff said on that one, I think.
- No money and other stressors. Tom described my studying for medical transcription stress experience of these last few months to going down a long hallway where no matter how far you go, the end keeps seeming to be further away. That has really done a number on my stress level lately. We've been living on one income for about 3 years now, and I've felt the pressure of finishing this stupid program every single day of those years. And, it's worse now more than ever because the medical bills are now piling up (okay, they have been). *sigh*
Okay, so you get the picture. When I was younger, maybe early 20s, I heard all these stories from women a little older than me that were gaining weight, but they all attributed it to baby-weight, like they'd had a baby and hadn't been able to lose that extra __ pounds since then. So, I was thinking (reasonably, I thought, at the time) that all I had to do was keep active if I ever got pregnant, and I'd be okay. Other than that, I'd probably be somewhere around where I'd been my adult life til then - a little high of the average for my height, but some of that I always attributed to, let's say... curves. I honestly thought I'd be okay. I'm not a big candy- or cake-eater, and in my adult years, I'd attempted to eat a *little* bit healthier, if a bit fattier than what was healthy.
So, here I am at a newly crowned 36 (Eek!), and I no longer feel confident in ANY bathing suit, so I haven't been swimming in AGES. Tom is a sweetheart and claims I'm just as sexy as ever, so THANK GOD that's not an issue, but I don't feel as sexy as I used to. I now *have* to get clothing out of the women's section instead of occasionally dabbling in Ts or jeans or something in the Jrs section at stores. And, not just the borderline sizes; I have to rifle through the the sizes to get to some of those with an "X" before the size - NOT cool. I can see weird dents and shapes in my nude body that I didn't have before (don't tell me you've never stood in front of the mirror and turned to look at your butt and not said, "Damn! When'd that happen?). My metabolism/energy level/whatever is absolutely horrible, too. It's a serious effort to walk the dog nowadays.
Now, I know several of my recent posts have been about my back and how that's affecting what I can and can't do, so I realize I have to take that into account, but seriously, I had all this extra around my waist before those issues declared themselves.
Anyway, so here's the thing... almost every woman at a similar age to me (30s mostly) are having the same problems. They're bigger than they used to be and don't feel confident where they are. People can talk about "round and happy" and "loving the body you have" and all that, and I totally get it, and having a supportive husband really does help with that. But, I seriously have a ton of friends, relatives, whatever that are experiencing this kind of "limbo" space the same as I am. We aren't comfortable where we are, we don't know how to dress these new bodies, we don't feel confident getting our pictures taken anymore, we don't feel like "displaying" our image anymore and so on...
So we try to eat healthier, get active, set goals, support each other... Which is all GREAT and HEALTHY. It just seems interesting to me that we're all kind of hitting this at the same moment in our lives. What's happening to our bodies around this time that is making this phenomenon so common? Is it metabolism? Failure of our bodies to evolve from manual labor-filled workdays to office work? Or happy marriages/relationships (and therefore less stress about keeping trim)? Or less time? Or too much stress? Is it a hopeless cause? Will we ever be able to get to a "comfortable" shape again? Are we lying to ourselves when we say we're "okay" with how we are now? If we are, how can we feel better? Why do we have to live in this limbo? Is it possible to truly feel good about ourselves during this period of adjusting to and/or trying to change our new shapes?
What do YOU think? Why do you think women of my age are tending toward this issue? And, why do you think our efforts to try to change it have been less than successful? I really would love to hear your input on this.
C
Tom and I got married when I was 30. I had just turned 30 a month before the ceremony, and I was in reasonably good shape. This post isn't about specifics, but I'll just say that I was really comfortable wearing bikinis on my honeymoon in Hawaii. I wasn't thin, and I've had a "pooch" at my lower abdomen since I started the pill at 14, so I wasn't Sports Illustrated material, but I wasn't nearly as self-conscious about my body as I am now, 6 years later.
Over the last 6 years, several things have contributed to my gaining about... let's say 50 pounds:
- Tom and I are both ridiculously lazy and will give in to the merest suggestion of eating out instead of cooking, and for the years since we've moved up here (5), it's been mostly fast-food instead of nice restaurants because of budget constraints (fast food = fatty food, in case you hadn't heard).
- I went through a very high-stress period (because of which I ended up leaving my job) where I was definitely not eating or exercising or doing anything else healthy - I know I wasn't sleeping well, had tons of migraines around that time (ER visits - Yay!) - all that fun stuff surrounding basically having a nervous breakdown.
- A few of my medications (to prevent said migraines, mostly) actually have a side effect of GAINING WEIGHT. Ugh. How stupid is that?! *sigh* Yeah. And, I'm still on them. We tried several months ago to reduce my dosage and the headaches came back immediately. Not cool. So, I'm steadily STILL gaining weight from those.
- A few (okay, probably most, actually) of my medications have a side effect of fatigue. Like I really need help being lazy! Though I take the majority of them at night, I know they still affect my day-to-day energy levels. And, my metabolism wasn't great to start with.
- Depression. 'Nuff said on that one, I think.
- No money and other stressors. Tom described my studying for medical transcription stress experience of these last few months to going down a long hallway where no matter how far you go, the end keeps seeming to be further away. That has really done a number on my stress level lately. We've been living on one income for about 3 years now, and I've felt the pressure of finishing this stupid program every single day of those years. And, it's worse now more than ever because the medical bills are now piling up (okay, they have been). *sigh*
Okay, so you get the picture. When I was younger, maybe early 20s, I heard all these stories from women a little older than me that were gaining weight, but they all attributed it to baby-weight, like they'd had a baby and hadn't been able to lose that extra __ pounds since then. So, I was thinking (reasonably, I thought, at the time) that all I had to do was keep active if I ever got pregnant, and I'd be okay. Other than that, I'd probably be somewhere around where I'd been my adult life til then - a little high of the average for my height, but some of that I always attributed to, let's say... curves. I honestly thought I'd be okay. I'm not a big candy- or cake-eater, and in my adult years, I'd attempted to eat a *little* bit healthier, if a bit fattier than what was healthy.
So, here I am at a newly crowned 36 (Eek!), and I no longer feel confident in ANY bathing suit, so I haven't been swimming in AGES. Tom is a sweetheart and claims I'm just as sexy as ever, so THANK GOD that's not an issue, but I don't feel as sexy as I used to. I now *have* to get clothing out of the women's section instead of occasionally dabbling in Ts or jeans or something in the Jrs section at stores. And, not just the borderline sizes; I have to rifle through the the sizes to get to some of those with an "X" before the size - NOT cool. I can see weird dents and shapes in my nude body that I didn't have before (don't tell me you've never stood in front of the mirror and turned to look at your butt and not said, "Damn! When'd that happen?). My metabolism/energy level/whatever is absolutely horrible, too. It's a serious effort to walk the dog nowadays.
Now, I know several of my recent posts have been about my back and how that's affecting what I can and can't do, so I realize I have to take that into account, but seriously, I had all this extra around my waist before those issues declared themselves.
Anyway, so here's the thing... almost every woman at a similar age to me (30s mostly) are having the same problems. They're bigger than they used to be and don't feel confident where they are. People can talk about "round and happy" and "loving the body you have" and all that, and I totally get it, and having a supportive husband really does help with that. But, I seriously have a ton of friends, relatives, whatever that are experiencing this kind of "limbo" space the same as I am. We aren't comfortable where we are, we don't know how to dress these new bodies, we don't feel confident getting our pictures taken anymore, we don't feel like "displaying" our image anymore and so on...
So we try to eat healthier, get active, set goals, support each other... Which is all GREAT and HEALTHY. It just seems interesting to me that we're all kind of hitting this at the same moment in our lives. What's happening to our bodies around this time that is making this phenomenon so common? Is it metabolism? Failure of our bodies to evolve from manual labor-filled workdays to office work? Or happy marriages/relationships (and therefore less stress about keeping trim)? Or less time? Or too much stress? Is it a hopeless cause? Will we ever be able to get to a "comfortable" shape again? Are we lying to ourselves when we say we're "okay" with how we are now? If we are, how can we feel better? Why do we have to live in this limbo? Is it possible to truly feel good about ourselves during this period of adjusting to and/or trying to change our new shapes?
What do YOU think? Why do you think women of my age are tending toward this issue? And, why do you think our efforts to try to change it have been less than successful? I really would love to hear your input on this.
C