I grew up listening to my mother and her friends talk about menopause. They’d sit around eating sweet rolls with coffee and bemoan how life is cruel to women. According to them, once women hit the menopause mark, they might as well hang it all up and let themselves go.
“Women get fat when they hit menopause.”
“No use fighting it.”
They’d smile at me, a teenager at the time, and nod their heads sagely as if to say – just wait till you get there.
Well, I’m here – almost, kinda…let’s just say it’s looming on the horizon. And I feel absolutely great about myself! I wanted to post this to share with other women that middle age doesn’t mean that we have to sit back and let ourselves go. I almost did. For a period of time, I gained weight and was the heaviest that I’d ever been in my life and I was making excuses that I was getting older… closer to menopause… I’m a mom – yes, isn’t that the lousiest excuse you ever heard? Using motherhood as an excuse to let yourself go. But apparently many women do.
I’m not a doctor, a nutritionist, dietician or exercise coach. But I wanted to tell you ladies out there that feeling and looking good is a state of mind, not due to your age. Women can look and feel great at any age. It’s all up to us. Everything else is just excuses.
I joined a boot camp, one that had women of all ages and levels of fitness. Not a huge chain gym where young, beautiful people go to check each other out. All that did for me was make me want to run home and hide myself in embarrassment. Find a small one with women only. It’s motivating to be around other women who are striving for the same things – to feel and look better. The woman that ran the boot camp was an amazing woman who shared her knowledge of nutrition and fitness with us. She gave us a basic breakdown of why we gain weight and provided us with tools needed to get to our goals. One of the best tool she gave me was to download a calorie counting app on my phone. I used MyFitnessPal and it became something fun for me. Once you key in the basic information about yourself it creates a graph of your progress. I had the ability to track my calorie intake as well as my calories burned. It became fun to manipulate the calories while staying within my daily goal. Amazing app. If you are looking to lose weight and get healthier – I would definitely suggest looking into it or something similar. After using this app for a good three months I’ve now gotten a much better sense of how many calories I’m putting in my body vs how many I’m burning and no longer need the app so much. It’s still there though for those weeks that I feel like I’m sliding.
Exercise – it really does feel good once your body gets used to it. It’s getting there that’s hard. Again the boot camp helped. Being around other women is a powerful motivating factor. When you see all these other girls working their asses off, you don’t want to be the one who gives up so you hang in there till the end. After six weeks of boot camp, I had gotten the weight off and my energy level up to the point where I could continue on my own. I now run at least a few times a week and go out for mini power walks whenever I can get away from my desk throughout the day at work. I’ve gotten to the point where I feel sluggish if I don’t get that exercise in.
Diet – Forget the word “diet”. It’s all about taking in the appropriate amount of calories and burning them off. One of the best advice I got was to shop the perimeter of the grocery store and avoid the aisles. All the processed, fatty stuff are in the middle. After doing this for a few weeks, I found that I was feeling so much better – more energy and not so heavy and sluggish. That’s not to say I don’t ever have a slice of pizza or that luscious chocolate cake – I do, just in moderation. And it’s something that I can look forward to now rather than having it all the time. Ever notice how something tastes so much better when you have it once in a while vs having it every day? It does, it’s just so much more delicious when it’s a treat. The one thing that I do miss is soda. I’m human after all. I used to drink coke like no one’s business. It was my “coffee” in the morning and my energy drink in the afternoon, not to mention the drink of choice at various times of the day. I gave it up – very reluctantly, I might add – telling myself that once the weight came off, I’d be able to treat myself to a soda or two once in a while. I haven’t. I know myself and I know that once I get a taste of that sweet, bubbly stuff I’ll be hooked again. So, I stick to water and stay away from the sodas. I’ll treat myself with wine or a drink here and there but no sodas.
Ladies – you can stay fit and healthy at any age. You can feel and look as fantastic as you want. Don’t let anyone tell you that at a certain point in your life you might as well hang it all up and accept that weight gain is a result of middle age. Sure, metabolism does slow down and your body does have more aches and pains than it did when younger, but it’s all manageable if you put your mind to it. So, let’s do it! Let’s be the most fantastic group of middle aged women known in history!!
firelightdreams 