Summer is over for me and it’s back to reality now – which means no more bacon with breakfast every morning and no more desserts every night. No more good beer or wine either. I’ll have my work cut out for me when I go home to lose the weight I put on in the process of having such a good time this summer. It’s always amazing to me how much easier it is to gain weight than it is to lose it, especially as I get older.
I admit that part of me wants to lose the weight for the sake of vanity. I have to accept that I’m at an age now that I look better dressed than undressed, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Beyond how I look is how healthy I am.
There are unhealthy lifestyles that can take their toll on the way you live and age: excessive eating / weight gain, drinking to excess, smoking, working too much to give a few examples of things that people do have some control over. Then there are hereditary illnesses like heart disease, hypertension, strokes, and diabetes that tend to run in families – not always possible to totally avoid but a sensible approach can probably avert certain disaster.
Living the expat life, most of the expats I meet are in their 30s and 40s with young children. They’ve gone abroad to make more money and live a better lifestyle than they could in their home country. The women I socialize with tend to be very fit and health conscious – many working out at the gym several times a week. In my day to day live in Egypt, I don’t interact with that many older people. It’s been very different this summer. There seem to be senior citizens everywhere I look, in varying degrees of health. Some are out power walking or bicycling while others are stooped nearly in half making their way slowly and painfully around the grocery store.
Watching them has made me realize that one day I’ll be old too – sooner than I’d like. There are always health crisis that you can’t predict like crippling arthritis or cancer, but barring those calamities, I want to be the old lady walking briskly down the street with my head high and shoulders back. I don’t expect to live forever, but I want to live well. I want to be strong enough to lift my own grocery bags and agile enough to reach the top shelf. I want to live long enough to see my children grow up and be healthy enough to see and play with their children.
I want to have the energy to spoil them rotten when they come and see me for summer vacation!
I recall when we were visiting my parents for our vacation. We were driving home from the lake where we’d spent a week water-skiing. My kids (probably about 6) said being old meant you had lines in your face and walked with a cane. I asked how old “old” was, and they said, “probably 60.” I pointed out that their grandparents, who had been driving the ski boat and teaching them to ski (as well as plenty of skiing themselves) were in their 60′s.
Old is what you make of it. I get irked when an author writes of someone seeing and ‘elderly woman, probably in her 50′s’
Give me a break!
by Terry Odell August 21st, 2009 at 8:18 amMy perception of “old” has definitely changed as I’ve aged. When I was a child, anything over about 35 was old! Now I feel like it’s more of a state of mind than a number.
by Jenyfer Matthews August 21st, 2009 at 1:46 pm