One Thing or Another Column: Midlife Waist Land
Narration provided by Wondervox
By Mark McNease
One Thing or Another is a column about life, aging, and the absurdities of it all.
Midlife Waist Land
Since this column was first written we’ve seen a revolution in weight loss with the introduction and rapid spread of GLP-1 drugs. I’ve been using one myself for awhile now and I’ve lost 30 pounds. Will they change America’s obesity epidemic, or be another disappointment when we finally stop using them—if we ever do? Only time and affordability will tell. Stay tuned for the long-term side effects.
Whether or not you think your 60s still count as midlife (who doesn’t anticipate celebrating their 120th birthday wheezing out a single candle on a grocery store cake, flanked by an anxious home health aide and an impatient funeral director), the fact remains that age and width are proportionate for most of us. Not all of us, of course. There are those among us who insist they’re only as old as they feel, despite sharp disagreement from titanium hips and birth certificates. You know who you are: you swear by kale smoothies, you’ve never met an elliptical you didn’t want to mount, and you start each day by posting life-affirming platitudes on social media.
For the rest of us, attaining anything close to our dream weight, or dream finances or dream retirement, requires steady, soul-crushing effort and a predisposition toward delusion. I will get back to my pre-relationship weight, just 40 pounds and two decades ago. I will keep my calorie intake below the maximum daily allowance for a thin person. I will get through breakfast, lunch and dinner resolutely refusing bread and sugar … tomorrow. It’s always tomorrow, for with every morning that sees renewed commitment comes an evening enjoyed in honor of something to excuse that molten lava cake. It’s our anniversary, one of several, just in case. It’s Memorial Day weekend. It’s the quadricentennial of the printing press, of course this calls for toasted coconut gelato! So ends a day begun with such promise, but fear not—there will be a next time, another chance to claim victory over our impulses, at least until that funeral director gets tired of waiting and cashes the check.
Companies are aware of all this and have gone to great lengths to help us make them rich. There is now an app for every affirmation, and a form-fitting device for every goal. I’ve got a step counter on a string around my neck. My friends have them on their wrists. If you look around sometime, you’ll see nearly every biped you meet wearing some version of the ubiquitous tracker keeping scrupulous count of our leg-scissoring, heart pumping, and sleep deprivation from all those nightly trips to the bathroom.
We can instantly see how many steps we’ve taken from the couch to the refrigerator. We can divide it by calories, multiply by stairs climbed, and come to a scientifically reliable estimate of our daily success or failure, all using a thick rubber band with digital display on our arm. We can surpass our own expectations or fail miserably to meet them! We can even challenge each other in The Great Step Throwdown, seeing who took the most steps in a day and lived to crow about it. Bad knees at the 5,000 mark? Keep going! Upper thighs crying for relief at 7,000? Keep going! Tendinitis flaring up just about the time the Little Wristband That Could explodes with a bold, flashing 10,000 and confetti falls from the ceiling of our minds? Congratulations, you’ve just taken two years off your life expectancy, but you did it. You won. You can collapse now.
I’ll admit the biggest incentive I currently have for slimming down is the success my friends are having. Nothing says “failure” like eating out on Friday night with a husband who really has reached his pre-relationship weight, thanks almost entirely to that wristband I’ve just mocked, and a friend who’s lost 30 pounds through sometimes fatal means. I look at them. I look at me. I cross my arms over my belly to pretend it’s not there. And I check my steps. Just another hundred or so before the tyrant on a necklace says I can stop looking now. I’ve met my daily goal. I’m a winner in the Step Wars, or at least an infantryman. I’ll get there, somehow, someday, one step at a time. Meanwhile, I see a couple at the next table celebrating a birthday and I ask for the dessert menu. It’s only right.
