Life At 40

Technically, I’m only 41 days into the age of 40, but this (at least from what I hear) is the year it all starts to fall downhill. I’ve also heard that the eyes are the first to go: that usually at this age, folks start to need to wear reading glasses or have some adjustment to their eyes. I hope and pray that mine don’t get any weaker. I’m already sight-challenged as it is; my range of clear vision extends just to my arm’s length. To need reading glasses would only be to add insult to injury and would in all honesty, probably qualify me for a Seeing Eye dog. Needing reading glasses would mean that I would have to get bifocals. And I don’t care how sophisticated they have made the lenses; the result is still the same: your eyes end up looking freakishly big.

40 is also the age where I need to watch my weight more carefully, and also decide to do something to get rid of the extra little person that I have gotten used to carrying for the past five years. I am not talking about my son (who is only 2), but about those extra pounds that I once heard were the equivalent of carrying another person. Right now my person is probably about the size of a gangly 12-year-old who’s going through growing pains. This is the heaviest I have been. Ever.

The weight factor is important because I have a family history of absolutely everything. Seriously, my ancestors on both sides gave me a load of things to worry about later on in life: diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, mental disorders, stroke, aneurisms, muscular dystrophy, and possibly some other life-threatening problem that just hadn’t been diagnosed when my ancestors died from it. And most of these factors are directly correlated to how much weight is packed on.

So it’s time to get serious about undoing all the damage I’ve done over the dinner table. It’s a whole lot easier to add than it is to subtract. Five years ago, I’d developed all these great fastidious habits that aided me in my weight lose journey, and I’d made such great progress. But five years is a long time, and it’s going to be an even longer road to get back to many of those positive habits. The only I can say that I have cultivated well is my commitment to drinking lots and lots and LOTS of water, as I talked about in my “Waterlogged” blog earlier this year. So now I guess it’s time to concentrate on formulating the next good habit.