Weighty issues

It's not that I'm officially overweight. It's just that I want to nip the middle age spread in the bud. When I was younger, whenever I heard someone say how hard it is to keep off weight after 40, I always thought "that won't be me!" But here I am, counting points, jogging again, yearning to fit into my size 8 jeans. (I once wore size 6, but that was a long time ago after some guy broke up with me.) At 5' 10", I'll never be "petite." But "lanky" would be nice. Or "Svelte". My husband once called me "svelte" (God bless him), and then we started wondering what "svelte" actually means. So we looked it up and it means "slender and graceful, suave and polished." I really love my husband.

I'm trying to watch what I eat, exercise more, and not think about it too much. Because if you think about it too much, you get obsessed and crazy and you waste your life contemplating food and thighs and the size of your jeans.

And every once in awhile something happens to give you perspective. Like when I went out for sushi with my friend, Sara, a few months before she died of breast cancer. I had just started one of my many diets. I picked her up at Starbucks, where she had been reading. I hadn't seen her in a few months, and was surprised at her frailty. She was in lots of pain, and shuffled to the car. We drove to the sushi restaurant and sat down and ordered. She could barely eat, but she did manage to get down a few pieces of sushi. "look, i did pretty well!" She told me. I just stared at her too-full plate. All of the sudden I felt shame -- that I had been spending my time wishing I was thinner. Sara had lost at least 30 pounds. I felt like the picture of health, and all of the sudden I was thankful for my few extra pounds.

Anne Lammot says, "When you're 80, you're not going to wish you had spent more time keeping your thighs in shape." Amen and amen. Now if I could just remember that everytime I put on my size 10 jeans.