Shift happens — again and again.
Posted by Eileen Roddy-Phillips on Dec 18th, 2006
It’s official. I am fat. Well, according to the almost-20 year old fat-tester at my gym. I have not enough lean. I certainly have more fat than she has, but I have more years. So now I am fat and old? I take some comfort in the fact that some “experts” say that 50 is the new thirty, and at 60 I am really 40. So how old was I when I was 40? My fat-tester is still a baby. If I hang around long enough they might change the definition of fat.
Just to make sure I understood my fat-ness fully, Miss Fat-examiner said:
“Hmm ... you are also fat according to these figures from ....”
“And who are they to declare me fat?” I interrupted.
“Well, they are the people who know about health ....”
“And fat,” I sniffed helpfully.
“Well, you have more fat on your body than you need to have,” she offered, just in case I hadn’t quite got the seriousness of my condition.
“Now what do I do?”
“Well, you will just have to lose it?”
“Lose it? Lose it?” I spluttered, feeling that I was about to truly lose “it”
The situation called for drastic action, and I took it.
I made my way to the nearest coffee house and ordered tea with a scone to give me the energy to recover from the discovery of my official fatness.
“How could this “stuff” have crept up on me?” I asked myself, as I put some jelly on the chocolate-chip scone. It suddenly tasted like fat.
“Eat me, eat me!” it shouted.
Don’t you just hate it when your food starts talking back to you?
I thought I needed a second opinion. Maybe I could ask my husband? Fat was a very serious subject and he might endanger life and limb if he were really honest with me.
I could ask a friend but most of my friends appeared to be officially lean and unencumbered around their middles. They had obviously heard that 40 was really 30 long before me, and had decided that their bodies would remain in the lean zone reserved for those of younger years.
“Maybe I should just try to lose the fat as the trainer suggested?" I mulled. I hate losing anything. I remember the first time I lost my pocket-money when I was a child. I cried for days. I asked God to help in the search to find my penny but He was busy with bigger things. I still cry at the loss of our first dog. Then I lost friends who died too early and parents who did the same. So how could I possibly talk about loss? My body would sabotage the process. Loss was too discomforting, too raw. My body would not accept it in a positive way, in spite of what Miss Pollyanna Trainer said.
No, a new plan of action was called for.
I needed to invent a new language for my present state. I refused to allow my body to embark upon a deliberate course of loss. If I told my body it was going to “lose weight” it would not cooperate. So what was I going to do? Would I accept that someone else on a committee in Washington was going to call me fat? Should I allow myself to accept the label of “officially fat” and feel bad about myself? No, I decided. A big shift in attitude and language skills was required. The extra fat has sneaked up on me, bit by bit. Did it happen when I was asleep? The remains of the chocolate chip scone stared at me.
I realized it had happened one scone at a time, one piece of delicious chocolate at a time. The shift had been subtle.
I heard a chocolate bar call to me from several stores away. On this occasion, I told it I was busy. I decided to be truthful with myself. Did I feel really well? Did my body feel as if it were carrying a few pounds of potatoes around? Did I still fit into my favorite clothes? Did I feel slinky and sexy in the underwear from the bottom drawer? The answer was “No.” I tried a few more questions along similar lines; I got the same answer.
Why had I gone to the gym for the assessment in the first place? I knew I needed to be healthier. I knew my energy was not what it should be if I was really a new 40. I knew that drastic action would not work for me. The fat had crept up on me, so it needed to creep off. If I changed my attitude and worked towards feeling healthier, I knew the extra fat would shift and melt. I knew I could change my attitude about how I looked at myself and not be swayed and depressed by the judgments of others.
I decided I would be a real 60 year old; a woman who would not be a slave to scones and chocolate, or experts from Washington. I will keep you posted.
at 3:20 p.m.
Hi, Eileen!
Got on board this train and had great fun reading your first article -- it's so you (funny, droll, and well written) -- I can actually hear your voice when I read it.
Here's one of the best examples: "I hate losing anything. I remember the first time I lost my pocket-money when I was a child. I cried for days. I asked God to help in the search to find my penny but He was busy with bigger things. I still cry at the loss of our first dog. Then I lost friends who died too early and parents who did the same. So how could I possibly talk about loss? My body would sabotage the process. Loss was too discomforting, too raw."
And do I ever sympathize and empathize. My 60th will be coming up next year on Shakespeare's birthday and even tho I've always seen him as an intellectual guide and personal friend -- I won't be happy as I usually am to share birthdays with him next year!!
Although, I will be sneakily happy to finally hit 60. The 30's, 40's and 50's were all a bit boring. The 60's however, are FULL of challenges and goals -- in fact, EVERY DAMN THING IS A CHALLENGE NOW!!!
Nice to have those goals -- if I could only see them clearly without having to use eyedrops and get up out of the recliner to chase after them.
Keep 'em comin', Eileen!
Mike
at 11:26 p.m.
This was pure Eileen, through and through!
Great job, keep 'em coming!
Lori V
eroddy
at 9:58 a.m.
Thanks for your comments, Mike and Lori. You will not find it too hard to believe that it has taken me nearly TWO WEEKS to work out how to get registered and get a password so that I could make comments on the blog and the column. I had to go to my "technological knight in shining armour", David Ryan, to get me set up. What is it about so many of us Boomergirls and technology? I don't think it is so much resistance to change, as it is the massive learning curve it requires. I was on my manual typewriter until 1995 and the challenge of transferring skills was pretty intense. The number of computers that nearly bit the dust was 10 too many!
Mike, congratulations on being the first MALE to comment on my blog. You have ventured into great territory. I am glad you see the sixties period of your life as challenging. Of course, there are challenges and there are challenges. The computer challenge is one I could well do without. On the other hand, my venture into its world has opened up so many exciting new things for me. My hope is that this site will open a dialogue between men and women so that we can honestly share some of our challenges and triumphs and learn to communicate in new and different ways. I would be interested to find how men like you have coped with the challenges of career changes/ends and how you adjust to the changing bodies. I have to say, however, that, while my body spreads in places I do not really want to spread, my husband still gets into the same size trousers year after year. A bit of spread might be acceptable in child-bearing years, but I thought it might come to a halt afterwards.
I look forward to your further comments.
at 10:28 p.m.
Fun reading, Eileen.
I await your next.
at 2:53 p.m.
What a find! I was browsing through your site and happened upon "Shift Happens!". What a refreshingly well articluated feature with a wonderful sense of humour interspersed! I write for a local paper in England, "North Devon JOurnal" so if your Roddy-Phillips ever decides to move to the UK I'm sure we could give her a column of her own!!
Enjoy shifting and I look forward to hearing what happens next.
thanks
Anne Tattersall
at 6:50 p.m.
this made me smile! i can completely relate...and don't feel badly- i am only 38, but feel ancient next to the perky little girls that work at the gym. during my last "class", as my instructor was wiggling about at the front of the room, smiling and barely breaking a sweat (much less becoming short of breath) i was overcome by the nearly insuppressible urge to grab her by her bouncy little blonde ponytail and swing her around over my head...if only i had the energy after all that hopping around! the irony is, i used to be that girl.... :) karin feltman
eroddy
at 11:56 a.m.
Thanks for sharing that, Karin. I am glad that I am not the only one who has such urges. I loved your line "I used to be that girl." I have been looking through some photographs of me on my honeymoon ten years ago. I looked fantastic. I think this is part of the challenge for me as I grow older; how do I change and shift my perspective so that "that girl" still has value and can blossom? I love it when I see older women - some of them in their eighties, who are "at ease" in their bodies. Their inner spark shines and they are truly beautiful women.
I had one of "those urges" at the store the other day when standing by the magazine rack at the "express" check-out counter. Don't you just love that word "express" for baskets of approximately 12 items? I seem destined to get behind someone who might be able to read, but who has great difficulty counting to twelve. These persons are also the ones who wait until everything is packed and the amount tallied before the realization hits them that they need to get a check book out and actually pay. Anyway, every single one of 16 different magazines at the check-out (yes I had plenty of time to count them, as well as the 31 items in the cat in front of me!) had a screaming headline on the cover "Lose 10 pounds by Sunday...." or "Look beautiful like the stars - have a beautiful body in two weeks".
We are bombarded by "icons of beauty" and impossible goals for getting thinner (and thinner). It is so easy to get caught up in all of that, and try to make our bodies and our images conform to certain notions of what beauty really is. It is also easy to delude ourselves into believing that if our body looks o.k. eveything else is o.k. too. I think I feel another blog coming on!