ALMOST FIFTY: 49.1

Dude!  I am ALMOST 50!!!  I turned 49 last month and had been 4 days into a new routine. You see, my husband turned 51 on that day and after having a very delicious, very carb-filled Cuban meal of sandwiches, fries, plantains, and café con leche,(at a local Cuban restaurant) he looks out the window and across the street sees (of all things) a gym. “Let’s go check it out.” I’m thinking, “Dude, I’m full. And I feel fat..”. All the sugars/carbs processing in my body are saying, “how about a nap, instead?” But will wins over and we drove, parked and entered. That night and a few hundred bucks later, we became members of that gym.

I’ll pause right there to let that sink in. Remember, 7×7=49. My age. Remember?

So here is where I tell you that I have been a member of a gym before. Granted it was in my twenties. Which is actually one of the many observations I have had since joining this gym. It’s full of twenty year-olds and forty/fifty year-olds. I assume because most people have kids, bills, and other things that keep them from the gym in their thirties and forties.

In my twenties, I thought I was fat. I weighed more than 120 and less than 130 lbs, but I thought this was sacrilege considering I weighed 110 when I graduated high school. Ah the foolishness of the young…

I’ve had two daughters and after the last one I was around 132. After that, in my thirties and forties, the weight kept creeping up my door and I kept letting it in. At 40 I was close to 170-lbs. Some of you know this. You have seen me OR pics of this.

But something happens after you enter into another decade. Wisdom? Fear? Health issues? All of the above?

Maybe because I read a lot; Or maybe because things happen and you look things up and you slowly acquire knowledge cause it’s actually relevant to you.  Either way, in 2009 my husband and I bought an elliptical and we began actually using it.

Yes, of course I hated it. But then I realized: headphones, music, audiobooks, podcasts. All of the above are great distractions. No, unlike the woman who looks like a freaking gazelle when she runs on the treadmill at the gym, I am not a “purist”. I NEED to be distracted from the task at hand. I can’t run and “listen to my body” for twenty minutes. Nah.

So the weight can off. And at 44, I went all the way down to 123! A record low for me.

But then my father was diagnosed with ALS and less than a year later, the bastard illness took him from us. I was devastated. And I stopped exercising.

What happened physically to me is what could happen (and does happen) to most women in their forties. My metabolism slowed down even more and the weight crept back up.

I still had the elliptical, but now it seemed harder to get on it. And even when I committed time to it for weeks on end, the scale would not move.

My thyroid! I proclaimed to my doctor. And indeed my levels were way high. I went get into the minutia of my levels (maybe on another post), but with tweaking of my supplements (iodine, Vitamin D,K, magnesium) and a newfound commitment to moving daily, I am seeing change in my body.

This isn’t for hubris or aesthetics that I am doing this. (Though I have kept an old bathing suit… lol). I am committed because in 11 months I’ll be 50 and that is a new decade; and I don’t want to be pre-diabetic or take pills for cholesterol (or pills for anything). So I read and find out things like what bulletproof coffee is and how it compares to a coffee bomb; and to know what IS the difference between Keto and Paleo.

I’m making the time because I’m realizing that my time OVERALL is limited. Health is the most important thing you or I have. When you’re unhealthy and sick, nothing else is as important.

I tell my daughter and my students to own their decisions. I’m walking that talk (really fast on an elliptical).

If you’ve read this far, I Hope I’ve inspired you. I’ll post progress as it comes. The more you let people know, the more accountable I feel. So, one month down, eleven to go til 50.