Another Miracle Diet! Who Cares?

Just how hard is it to lose weight after the age of fifty? Really hard. The magazines in my online account are all blasting the same message right now - how to lose weight quick and get in shape for that beach body we are all looking for this summer. Low carb, Paleo, vegan,  liquid meal replacements, low calorie, no white food, "clean" food. It's a steady stream of what and what not to put in our mouths to get the desired result which is less fat on our bodies.  At my age it seems that you have to run harder just to stay in the same place with things like weight control and fitness. Results are hard to come by due to changing hormone levels and slower metabolisms.  My husband is a huge believer in the low carb diet and it has worked very well for him in the past but lately the results are not as impressive. I favour the low calorie, high fibre kind of diet. Again, results are not as impressive as they once were. What to do now?

I can barely remember a time when I was not concerned with my weight. That is a sad thought but true.  I was my mother's plumpest baby, with adorable, squeezable, chubby legs and arms. I grew into a normal sized child until about ten years old when the chubby reappeared. I preferred reading over running and loved potato chips and cookies so the weight stuck around. I wouldn't have made it onto the Maury Povich Show as a freakishly obese child but I did get some teasing and knew that I was not like my skinny sisters who bookended me in the family. Puberty struck and with it a huge surge in height which achieved a much desired result- I slimmed down. That stage was short lived. After high school, began a forty year period of ups and downs in my weight which continues till today.  The fat ever so slowly creeps onto my body and once I awaken to its stealth attack I ever so slowly wrestle it off. It is a slow motion battle between exhausted adversaries who will not give up the fight. No magic diets, no fast and amazing weight drops. Just a grind.

When I was chasing after my own two small children every day I could eat what I wanted and not gain weight, but otherwise I have pretty much mentally tallied every calorie that has gone in my mouth as an adult. That is a tiresome job, people.  A good friend and I have a deep bond over this issue as she, too has "dieted" most of her life.  We are living calorie counters, no app required.  The good news for us is that almost all of our slimmer peers have gone on to gain as much or more weight than we have. Age - its a great leveller. The pretty grow plain, the slim get heavy.

So now instead of being the "big girl" as I felt I was in the skinny era of the seventies, I sit in the middle of the pack even though I am over twenty pounds heavier then when I was in my twenties. My two sisters have suffered a similar fate and I'm betting it's even harder for them to deal with as their inner vision of themselves is probably much slimmer than mine is of me. Once chubby you are always chubby in your head. I can feel you "inner fatties" nodding. I understand.

Me at 18 years old,
Oh, to be so "big" again!

Weight loss is not out of my reach, its just an equation, calories in, calories burned. Simple. But here's where I see the real change for those of us over fifty, beyond metabolic rates and loss of muscle...we just don't care as much.  The media finally has less effect on us and our self worth as determined by our thigh gap (I've never had one - see picture). We want to enjoy life and what we have worked hard for and sometimes that includes a piece of chocolate, an extra glass of wine or some of the demon white flour in the form of pasta or a baguette. No young man with the body of a Greek god is breaking down my door, promising me love if I would just lose those extra ten pounds and then we could run away and make the world envious with our physical beauty. No, that is not happening. I am invisible to young Greek gods now but I am healthy, reasonably fit, not on any medications.  That is what I care about now.

I just read an article in Prevention Magazine about health and fitness expectations for every decade in a woman's life. After sixty, it said, don't worry about those few extra pounds. They are needed to protect you if you fall (padding!) and will come in handy if you get seriously ill. Now that is the best news I've read all year. I will no longer consider myself overweight but rather I am in self protection mode.

The Third Act of Life Before the Final Curtain

I'd like to be picked up in this...
in case anyone cares

The curling script read "Forest Lawn" on the side of the pale silver hearse.  I was peeking out between the blinds of my bathroom window for my usual morning weather check when I saw it. As gaped through the slats, two people dressed in sombre black got out of the vehicle and mounted the steps of the house across the street. They knocked and were immediately let inside. Show over, I went downstairs to get my morning coffee with the new knowledge that someone on the street had just died. Those people don't show up for false alarms. The unofficial town cryer of my block soon apprised me of what had happened. A 62 year old man had died of cancer.  I didn't know the man, I've only lived on the block for 18 months and he wasn't here most of the time, but still....62.  Sobering.

Ian Brown's "Sixty"

For the last month or so I feel that I have been surrounded by the prospect of aging and the end of life. My doctor had recommended I read a book entitled "Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End" by  Atul Gawande. The author is an American doctor, a son of two doctors. It's a thoughtful, informative (too informative, perhaps) and honest description of our aging process and how modern medicine aids or hurts us in the end. That was my light Christmas holiday reading. At the same time I also read a book recommended by my sister, "Sixty" by Ian Brown. Brown is a Canadian journalist who decided to keep a diary from his 60th birthday to his 61st and record his thoughts on his own aging and what he saw around him. It's comic, tragic and unflinching. I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Male or female, we share much the same problems and issues with our human bodies and minds. Aging is a great leveler.  In both books the authors watched their active, interesting, very elderly fathers die. One son recorded it in great medical detail, the other as more of an emotional event. I was touched by both accounts and could identify with each of their losses.

My friends and I are all watching their parents get older and die. Many of my conversations now revolve around what is happening with our parents. Those who have already lost their parents to the great beyond can easily empathize with what is going on with those still left.  My father is gone and my mom, though healthy, is in her late eighties and is moving at the end of this month with her 90 year old partner into a retirement center. They are on my mind a great deal as I help them with their packing and concerns. This will be my mother's seventh move in the seven years since my dad died. That fact alone leaves me with a feeling that my older years may not be ones of peace and contentment but rather a searching for something I have lost. If I even make it to her age.

"Gentle Into This Good Night"
original art by Megan Podwin

I have believed for a while now that my arrogant Baby Boom generation is not going to live as long as we think we will. Our parents are from a generation in which so many have benefited from modern medicine and are living into their eighties and nineties. Do we think we will do the same? Will medicine save us from ourselves? As humans our lifespan seems to have stalled out, the oldest age reached is not getting any older. It is still very rare to see someone live past 105, let alone 115, despite medical intervention.  Our bodies do give out.  My generation has abused itself with drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, fast food, obesity, sedentary lifestyle and stress. Unless the aliens come to help out with their space age technology we will be, and already are, dying off. With assisted suicide becoming a reality in Canada I'm not sure that every Boomer will even choose to live out their years as those before us might have done.

Even though I am attempting to be 'ageless' those around me seem to be moving into their sixties and talking of retirement, of a loss of excitement with life, a feeling of closing doors, regrets.  No more big firsts ahead, so much of life is behind, not in front.  Ian Brown points out in his book that if we can expect to live to 85 then the span from 60 to 85 is as great as the span from 30 to 55. Who can't look back on that space of time and not feel that a great deal went on?  I believe we can still experience many "firsts", we just need to redefine them. There will never again be a first love, a first job, a first home purchased or a first baby born to me. That doesn't dismay me. I envy my children their beautiful youth but am well aware I had mine and that I enjoyed it. There are no 'do overs', that is not what I'm after. I may not be quite as energetic or as physically strong as I was but I am smarter, wiser and less foolhardy than when I was younger and I'm still curious, still interested and still hoping for more.
A friend of mine has a mantra, "this is as good as it gets" to help with her acceptance of where she is in life.  I dislike that phrase because I think there is the possibility of many things out there that I cannot even imagine yet that may prove to make life better next year than it is right now, at least for the next two decades. Life after eighty appears to be more problematic according to the reading I just did.  January has been a month of reflection and learning about aging and I am internalizing that and moving forward with positivity.  As an antidote,  I'm currently reading Blogging for Dummies and the latest novel from Alan Bradley, starring  his eleven year old fictional sleuth Flavia deLuce. Flavia puts me in touch with my eleven year old self who fell in love with stories of plucky children in England. They were a favourite escape of mine as a young girl and they still are, I guess.
 My grandmother, as she was nearing the end of her 93 years here, told my mom , "we just have to live it out until it's done". None of us knows when that will be so here's to living it out every day and finding our new set of "firsts" for the decades to come.

"Whereabouts Unknown"
original art by Megan Podwin

Ageless

I have decided to become ageless from here on.  One of those big number birthdays is looming in the coming year for me and judging by the way friends and family have handled theirs I think it might be best to just skip this one.  What is it about the birthdays that end in a zero anyways?  We seem to make such a fuss about them. Are there birthday cards that say "Happy 59th!"?  No, but look for wishes for your 40th, 50th, or 60th and they abound. I had lunch with a long time friend the other day who has a sixtieth birthday coming up in a couple of weeks and when  I asked her about it she cringed and looked furtively around the restaurant. "Don't say that too loud" she whispered, concerned that someone who knew her might be within hearing. Hmm. It appears to be a thing to be dreaded so the best solution to the problem is to be ageless. If anyone asks me how old I am, and let's face it very few people do ask that question of me nowadays, I'll give them my year of birth and let them figure it out for themselves.
Many years ago I worked with a woman who belonged to the Kabalarians, the group that believes in numerology, mostly as it pertains to your name. Change your name, change your destiny is their philosophy. I asked her what her previous name had been and she told me she couldn't speak it. To say the name would be like putting a drop of black paint into a bucket of white, ruining the perfection of her life.  So that's the approach I am going to take, I cannot speak my age. It would be the drop of black in the beautiful white pool of my life.

Enigmatic....

My handsome husband is often taken for being ten years younger than he is so it is even more imperative for me to become ageless. I don't think I can peel ten years off my age but if I become ageless, it's simple, right?  I can hear it now..."Ted looks like he's fifty, how old do you think Faye is?" "Ageless." will be the response. I love it. It is said you are as old as you feel. Well, some days I wake up feeling thirty five, other days it's more like seventy or what I imagine seventy to feel like. So the concept of agelessness dovetails perfectly with that sentiment. My age will flow up and down with how I feel every day, never settling on any one number.  I'm going to have to work at a few things here, no dressing like my children's generation does, no dressing like my mother, just floating somewhere in between, careful not to chase the fads and trends. To be ageless I need to be able to be imagined in any era. I will listen to all kinds of music, get better at technology and read more classics, maybe try to rid myself of generational specific slang. Be enigmatic.
I feel better already about the coming year. When you are ageless you don't age.. obviously. I'm sure that's how it will work. I will just be perfectly myself everyday at whatever stage I am at. There will be some spoilsports, I know, people wanting to throw great globs of black paint into my bucketful of white but let them. We, the ageless are not bothered by such mean spirits. Birthdays can still be celebrated just without the counting of candles and the balloons with big numbers on them floating above my head. You are all welcome to join me in agelessness. As one of my yoga teachers often says, "experience what it's like to drop one of the labels that you carry around." I always think of the labels of mother, wife, daughter when he says that but dropping the label of age is even more liberating. Think of it. Ageless.

The Birth of Venus by Botticelli

On The Precipice

I turned fifty-nine years old a couple of months ago and that fact seems to be on my mind quite frequently these days. It has been said that sixty is the new forty. What does that mean exactly? That question keeps popping into my brain as my sixtieth birthday comes ever closer. I neither feel nor look forty, that much I know, but what should I look or feel like at sixty?  The spirit of me that was nine is still the same at fifty-nine, that doesn't change but the body I carry that spirit around in has.  

Yes, this is who I am inside.

Fifty years ago perhaps, forty was the age of the dreaded "mid-life" crisis where men had affairs with their secretaries and traded in the family station wagon for a little red sports car and women had sex with the gardener now that the kids were in college. People married younger, had a family younger so by forty they were envisioning the life that many of us nearing sixty have in front of us now. Children are finally out of the house, relationship issues settled for better or worse, more financial stability. 
Back then parents in their forties probably seemed as old to their twenty-something offspring as we appear to ours now. Is that what is meant by "sixty is the new forty"? My parents generation grew up faster but did they really grow old faster or is that just a construct of my egotistical, rule-the-world, 'aren't we the best' generation of Baby Boomers? We have to believe that we can't possibly be as old at whatever age we are as our ancient parents seemed to be. 

June and Gabe ready to party
in 1972!  They are 51 and 43

I have a picture of my mother at her sixtieth birthday and when I look at that and think of who she really was and what she was doing at that age it is no different than my generation. No, she wasn't trying to wear clothes that her daughters were wearing or taking Boot Camp classes but she did go back to work after I left home and she and my dad were traveling and partying with friends in their spare time.  Living their life and enjoying it. No different than my husband and myself now. 
Its a conceit to believe because we may think we are fitter, better dressed, hipper and more worldly than the generation before us that somehow we are "younger". Sixty is sixty. If you were to open me up and examine what was there and compare it to what my mother's insides looked like at sixty you would probably not find much difference, in fact she might come out on top. I have had a different sort of life filled with more fast food and alcohol, more pressures and stresses over parenting and lifestyle, added to by social media and Martha Stewart. I've been bombarded by microwaves and the constant societal pressure to be young and perfect and yet, most of my peers require reading glasses, many have hearing aids, a surprising amount have hip replacements and are on blood pressure or cholesterol medication. We are not forty, and modern medicine is not going to save us in the way we think it will. 

So at fifty-nine and counting I feel as though I am standing on a precipice. I have been playing around in the forest, and now I have wandering over to the edge and am looking down. Unlike when forty was forty and there was still many years ahead, at sixty there are more years behind than ahead now. As I contemplate all this, the words of my late father, Gabe, come into my head. When he turned eighty he told me that he had never been bothered by any birthday except for his eightieth. He knew that he was probably in his last decade and that pissed him off a bit. He died at 87. I'm not feeling morbid or old or afraid of dying. I will choose to back away from the edge, live my life not looking down, unafraid of any birthday, like Gabe. And at eighty I'll let you know how it feels. 

Love in The Fast Lane

Are you over 75, single and looking for love?  Are you interested in finding that love online?  Well, I may be the right person to talk to.  For a woman my age I know way more about seniors online dating that I should have to.  And let me tell you, there is far more going on there than you can imagine.

When my mother, June (hi Mom!) was widowed seven years ago at the age of 80, she was devastated to find herself left alone when she had counted on my father to outlive her. He was eight years her senior so the odds weren’t with her plan but she had invested in magical thinking that she would die first. Fast forward a year and she could see that there was no going back, only moving forward, so she decided to try and find a new mate and online dating seemed the way to go.  June was, and still is, healthy, active and attractive and had enough money to take care of herself.  In short, a catch.  New photos were taken of her and I was recruited to write up a bio.                                              

                                                    My beautiful mother, June

An overly lengthy bio was written by yours truly (more about that later) and okayed by June.  Up went her profile and her preferences in a man.  It became apparent mighty fast that 80 year old men thought themselves a good match for a 55 year old woman. Their parameters for age seemed to be 55-79 so we decided that June needed to lie about her age. We quickly made her 79.  Who would we be hurting? I mean, really?  Women I know who are 55 and looking for love online are running into the flip side of the same problem, 75 year old men want to date them and the women are not interested. Women are a bit more realistic about the age thing, most 55 year old women would set their parameters at 50-65, not 30 -55 but hey, that’s life.

There are just as many seniors that post out-of-date pictures of themselves as people in other age categories do.  We saw pictures of men in tank tops looking manly, men standing in front of boats or RV’s, hooked up to oxygen tanks, one gent posted a picture of himself ironing…in a tank top. There was one nude shot of a young man proudly displaying his erection that managed to get by the filters but I deleted it before my mom saw it so his dream of having an older woman’s eyes on him was dashed. Poor guy.  So many times the men my mom met were so much older and frailer than their pictures that when my aunt was concerned about the dangers of my mother going off alone to meet a strange man for coffee or a meal, June scoffed at her and said, “ for god’s sakes, I could kick them over and make a run for it any time. There’s no danger!”  My mom is pretty fearless …and in pretty good shape.

Through it all my mom was a good sport, telling anyone who would listen about her escapades and laughing at herself. In the end she did meet a man, a couple of years younger than herself with whom she had a relationship for two years. The never lived together but spent a great deal of with each other. He died, unfortunately, but that is the downside of dating over 80. Everything is accelerated, the dating phase is brief, the commitment quick and it can be over in the time it takes a younger person to decide if they really are in love. There literally is no time to waste.

After the death of her man-friend (you just can’t say boyfriend about an 80 year old man) my mom picked herself up quite quickly and wanted back on the dating websites. The clock of life was ticking. This time around though she was more in control.  “Just put in a nice current picture of me and say how many kids I have, the men don’t care about anything else”, she told me. Okay then, so men don’t change much as they get older.  I complied with the directives and within a couple of months my mother had met a very nice man.  A few months later they were living together and are still together several years later.  Happy ending.

                                  June and Frank in September, 2015

The whole experience has been very illuminating.  I know the odds are that I may end up alone, outliving my spouse.  For some the release from marriage is a blessing, for others it’s a lonely place.  My mother is brave and forthright, clear in what she wants and she got it. Forging a new relationship after 60 years of marriage is not easy, its takes effort and compromise and fearlessness.  So if you are out there, trying online dating and not getting the results you want just think about June.  The ratio of men to women over the age of 75 is pretty unbalanced.  The odds were against her but she managed to find someone not once, but twice.  Despite the grey hair, the glasses and the wrinkles the actors in this play are all the same as their younger counterparts with one exception, they feel the passing of time.  Intensely.  Relationships are appreciated, not expected to be perfect and taken one day at time.  Today could be all they have. We would all be wise to carry that in our hearts.  Get on with it.

In The Grey Zone

I have recently accomplished what many women my age have only dreamt of….I have stopped colouring my hair. Oh, you were expecting something more daring, more interesting?. If you think this is not a big deal then you have not tried to be a woman in this society that has coloured her hair for thirty or forty years to maintain a façade of youth.  Our head of sometimes impossibly unnaturally coloured hair is our shield, our defense against aging. When we squint into mirrors, catch a glimpse of ourselves in a passing window or see a photo of ourselves, an illusion of youth is maintained by the colour of our crowning glory. How do we often describe someone to a stranger? By their height and hair colour. Its an important feature.  I was always a tall blonde, that made it simple to pick me out of a crowd.  My husband has been blessed by the gods of genetics with a lush head of mostly dark brown curls. He is the envy of his peer group and has been often accused of dying his hair. He does not and has the attractive touches of silver threads weaving through the brown to prove it.  So the desire for and envy of the hair colour of our youth runs through both sexes.    

                                                                                                                        ...aren't I cute?

I’m a natural blonde, white haired as a child.  As with most blondes, my hair darkened as I aged and I began adding highlights as a teenager. For years I had the long straight hair so admired by the sixties generation but it required a bit of lemon juice or the new favourite spray,“Sun In”, to maintain a “natural” streaky look. 

..."sun-kissed" in '74

Through my twenties and thirties those highlights were courtesy of my hairdresser at the salon.  Time consuming and expensive to keep up but necessary I felt, particularly as the grey hairs started to creep in.  At thirty-nine I lost all my hair to chemotherapy and when it grew back the colour was a uniformly depressing shade of medium-blah. Look it up, it's not nice. As tough as it was being bald, having an inch of medium- blah hair isn’t much easier when you are trying to recover your health and feel   positive about the world.  So off to the drugstore I went and on went the blonde dye when I got home.

Fast forward through another fifteen years of home colouring, salon colouring, highlights,etc.  Month after month, right before colouring it, I peered along the part in my hair and watched as the medium-blah shade changed to light-blah and then silver as the years passed.  When that half inch of roots was light enough I decided to take the plunge. That was over eighteen months ago and I quick cold turkey.  I knew that by fifty-seven I wasn’t fooling anyone with my blonde hair, no one would take me for a forty year old anymore so why bother trying to pretend?  I had read many stories of women who went through the same process.  One formerly dark-haired woman wrote that watching the grey hair grow in was like watching a glacier slowly creeping down her head. I loved the imagery, hated the idea but was curious to have the experience.

The good news is that for me it was a pretty painless process.  My hair is now a mix of very light blonde, silver, white, all shades of grey and some dark ash blonde. I like to call it Arctic Blonde.  Other than one semi-permanent colouring right at the three month mark  before I wedding I had to attend, there hasn’t been any need for additional highlights or gradual colour changes. I am free!  I have crossed one item off of the seemingly endless To Do list of maintenance on my middle aged body.  It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing.  On the days when I get out of bed and see a grey haired hag staring back at me in the mirror I shake it off and remind myself of all the upside, including the hours I have gained back from the chore of colouring my hair.

Honey blonde at 50
 Men proudly wear the badge of Silver Fox when they go all grey and I have decided on the title of Silver Siren. So if you dare, put down the bottle of dye and the rubber gloves and give in to the call of the Siren.  You know you want to.

     Silver Siren at 58

 

My Superpower

I have a superpower. Yes, I do. I didn’t acquire it until a few years ago but it might have been there all along. It just took a certain, ahem, maturity to bring it out.  I am a COW.  A Confident Older Woman.  It may not sound like much to you but it for me it ranks up with there the ability to fly or having laser vision.  Sometimes I am a Cranky Older Woman but the results are the same.  I get more of what I want.  Plain and simple and it’s wonderful. Here’s how my particular superpower works.  When one of those  young, sexy, svelte hostesses that are everywhere these days leads me to a table in the restaurant that is right opposite the restrooms or beside the bussing station and asks “is this alright?”, I say, pleasantly,  “No, is it possible to have that table over there?”  And I make eye contact with her and smile.  One must use one’s powers with great geniality.  Sometimes she quickly grabs up the menus she has laid down and says, “of course, no problem”.   Other times she pauses, goes back to the hostess station, consults her lists, confers with another staff member and then turns to me and says  “ Sorry for the wait, of course, no problem ”,  then she removes a ‘reserved’ sign and seats me.  It’s a beautiful thing.

A cow...

That is a very minor example of the use of the power.  I have used it for obtaining reimbursements that were at first denied, refunds that are tough to get, entrance into areas where I shouldn’t be, to get the use of something I need or simply for getting free things or discounts.  I am always pleasant, smiling and polite. Otherwise the superpower doesn’t work.  That’s just being rude or a bully. And if the power isn’t with me that day and I am denied, I accept that graciously. There will be another time.

                                                                                                            A "COW"

You may already have this power and think I’m an idiot for waiting so long to use mine but I was always a good girl. Took what I was given, didn’t ask for too much, didn’t make a scene.  But I’m getting older and I’m losing patience with other people determining things for me.  My husband was at times embarrassed by the use of my superpower but he is starting to really enjoy its benefits and will often employ me to make the requests that he cannot.  The power works best on all the younger people in the service industry, male and female, those young enough to be my children.  It is hard to say no to a woman who might remind you of your mother.  It’s the gift that you get with the thickening middle and the thinning hair.  Use it.

                                                                                                    

Once when seated in a upscale restaurant with friends, our party of four was then ignored for ten to fifteen minutes. Finally the young male host rushed over and apologized for the delay.  My friend gave him her dazzling smile and suggested that a complimentary bottle of Prosecco would help us overlook it. The young man paused for just a moment, trying to resist the power of the COW and then said, “of course, I can do that” and returned with the requested bottle.  My friend would not have made that request fifteen years ago.  There is a time between the years of youth and beauty, when flirtation is very helpful, and the era when the mature COW superpower kicks in and it’s not an easy one. The tired mother with two children in tow is not always well catered to or feels able to ask for what she wants.  She is too busy answering the demands of others.  But that time is behind me now. I am standing my ground, perfecting my pleasant but unwavering eye contact and not backing down.  When someone is heard to mutter, “what a cow” as I walk away I think to myself, “ yes, I am a COW and loving it. “