In honor of NOW's Love your Body blog Carnival, I'm posting today instead of my usual Monday about ways to love your body.
I've decided to do something difference in this post. I spent my 20's loving a thin body that wasn't mine. In my thirties, I worked on loving the body I have, fat and all. But now as I enter my forties, I face another body challenge: I have to learn to love my middle aged body.
As I get older, I find that I can't eat, sleep, or even move as I once did. Normal aches and pains from strenuous movement don't go away as quickly as they used to. Sometimes my arm hurts when I sleep on it wrong. And staying up late no longer means 3am but midnight.
Mid-life means foods you used to eat no longer agrees with you. The coffee you needed to get you through the day causes indigestion, energy drinks give you the jitters, and tea makes you pee fifty times a day. It means finding gray or white hairs on your head and freaking out over each one.
For advertisers, it's a cash cow because nothing is worthwhile unless you are young and thin. Since science hasn't found the fountain of youth, the goal for the middle aged is to try to LOOK young using plastic surgery, hair dyes, and of course no middle age weight gain.
If you already love and accept your fat (or thin) body, accepting middle age may be easier than you think. I have posted on this blog on occasion, that I have "Fat days". Days where the diet voice is louder than usual and fat is not the positive word I've come to love. I don't get many "Fat days" anymore. But now to add to this I have "old days." Of course I'm getting older every second, but when I say "Old days" it means failing to love my body for changing, a body that may one day die, something I didn't think about in my youth. Even in my darkest dieting day I was never one to prefer death over fat.
I will be honest here. Worrying about new tests for diseases considered rare in my youth are freaking me out. Cancer and heart attacks and menopause and retirement and long term care are freaking me out. Forgetting things I used to recall effortlessly is freaking me out.
In the beginning I plucked one or two white hairs but more came. I didn't run to get hair dye. My boobs are beginning to sag, but I won't get surgery. I have some creases in my face but I won't by age defying cream. There is nothing age defying in that cream. The cream, like dieting, is purely superficial. Dieting won't make you healthy and putting cream on your face won't make you young.
You just have accept age. Accept what it gives you, something more important-- Wisdom. The wisdom to know what is good for yourself. Wisdom to still love your body even though it no longer tolerates dairy, hurts when it rains, or forgets a name. Love your body no matter what it's size, age or disability. It is what you have and it needs you to love it because it will love you back. Loving and appreciating it will work better than any age defying cream.
This is absolutely lovely. I think yiou're right about how it will be easier to accept an ageing body when you've accepted your body as is.
I've spoken to so many women who put all of their stock into their appearance, only to freak out when they got older and suddenly going to the gym twice a week wasn't enough to keep them the same. It probably didn't make much difference before, to be honest.
Anyway! This was a great post and it made my morning to read it.
Posted by: Anna | October 19, 2011 at 07:48 PM
From another middle-aged chick, WELL SAID.
Posted by: The Well-Rounded Mama | October 19, 2011 at 11:19 PM
I have learned to love my (thin) body but just because I have never been fat doesn't mean that I haven't struggled with body issues or felt criticized for my body. I fear though that I am going to struggle when I hit middle age. I'm only 27 but I already don't like people telling me that I look anything over 21. I have always looked young in person but photograph my age or older depending on my makeup, so I am used to people telling me to my face that I look 18 even though I am 27 and I have always enjoyed that. I suppose if I keep living a healthy life, I will tend to look younger anyway...but I still fear that fear I will eventually face. By that time, my modeling and pageant career will have been long over so my looks may not be as important to my opportunities and my work as they are now. I am confident I will learn to pull through it.
Posted by: Ashley | October 20, 2011 at 01:00 AM
I love it, Lara! When Kate Harding posted on the fantasy of being thin, I realized that my fantasy at the time was "if I'm thin, I'll be young again."
We have so much pressure to "age gracefully" (i.e. look young and thin while you are doing it). I have found that the best thing for the wrinkles on my face and the grey hair is to quit stressing, primarily quit stressing about trying to look young or thin. One of the most beautiful sights I've seen is a happy, serene, older, wrinkled, chubby face.
Posted by: Lonie Mc. | October 20, 2011 at 10:32 AM
You put this so graciously and lovingly that the only thing I can do in response is nod yes yes yes and smile.
Thanks from all of us who are of "a certain age." :))
Posted by: Frannie Zellman | October 20, 2011 at 10:57 AM
I love this post. I see my mom (now in her mid-50s) struggling a lot with aging and I always try to be supportive and remind her of things I learned from the FA movement.
Posted by: Jen | October 20, 2011 at 04:10 PM
Thankyou for posting this, I am 22 and I have always been, I think, more aware of my own mortality than the average for my age, but this really gave me some useful perspective about not fearing that I will be less healthy when I get older, because, yeah, I almost certainly will be, at least eventually (I say this because I am currently making changes to work towards healthier eating and more exercise, not for weight loss but for health, and for all I know I may actually be healthier a year from now if I keep it up), but I will still be inhabiting my body, it will still be what I live in, what I am (my brain is part of my body after all) and hating it for not being as able to bounce back as it was once won't make me happier, it will stop me from enjoying the good things I do have in my life and making the best of the time I have left.
Posted by: Claymore | December 13, 2011 at 07:25 PM
Really an adorable post.I am very much stressed coz of my over weight.And I have found that the best thing for the wrinkles on my face and the grey hair is to quit stressing, primarily quit stressing about trying to look young or thin.
Posted by: business marketing | December 17, 2011 at 05:09 AM