Category: Fitness

Say No to Granny Jeans

On By PamelaIn Beauty, Fashion, Fitness, Health, Hot flash, Humor, Menopause, Perimenopause, Women's Health2 Comments

Dammit, it’s happened twice. I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it anymore.

I’m talking about going to a department store, asking a wisp of a 20-something salesgirl for help finding (insert clothing item here), and being shown the most godawful, matronly, downright HIDEOUS (insert clothing item here) in the entire store.

What gives? Do I really look like I could have such abominable taste in clothing? Or worse, do I really look that…old?

The first time it happened was early in the summer, and I was searching for a one-piece bathing suit. I know, I know. I haven’t actively looked for a one-piece since age 29 when I joined a new gym and wanted something practical to be able to wear while swimming laps in the pool. Okay, so I never actually swam laps, but the swimsuit was darned cute and it had built-in underwire bra cups that made my girls look swimmingly perky.

But I digress. Early this summer I was feeling dumpy and doughy, pasty and pudgy. This after two and a half years of less-than-frequent special guest appearances at said gym. The Hot Hot Husband and I were headed for a little weekend R&R in Palm Springs, and I was ashamed to appear poolside in a bikini, so I dragged my low self-esteem to A Big-Name Department Store that Started in the Pacific Northwest and hoped for the best.

Instead, I got a well-intentioned salesgirl who ushered me into a cavernous fitting room with Saw III-caliber lighting, and who reappeared a couple of minutes later hauling 10 one-piece swimsuits so AARP that I’m sure even Margaret Thatcher would have been offended.

But putting on my Pollyanna hat, every cloud has a silver lining, and this cloud sent me storming to the gym to sign up for personal training.

Three months later, at the same Unnamed Department Store, I’m searching for a Cute Top à la Audrey Hepburn in Two For the Road. A ballet-neck, three-quarter sleeve navy blue t-shirt that’s form-fitting, timeless and totally Euro. This time, a thirty-something sales clerk intercepts me on the sales floor and asks if I need help.

Same routine, different cavernous fitting room, same scary slasher-movie lighting. I wait with anticipation, my back to the circus funhouse of a mirror. In walks Helpful Sales Clerk Girl, with an armful of the most geriatric selection of tops this side of the senior center canasta club. I give her some points for getting the color right (I mean, how can you fuck up navy blue?). But the fabrics, Hazel, the fabrics! Polyester, jersey (and not the Diane Von Furstenberg kind), and for Pete’s sake, fleece! And the styles? Four words: Golden Girls, circa 1981.

With all due respect to Betty, Rue, Maud and Estelle, I look NOTHING like a Golden Girl. I mean, c’mon. I’m only 45! So fast forward to this past Labor Day weekend at the flagship store of the aforementioned Temple of Retail Therapy. Thanks to my sadistic personal trainer, I am now the proud bearer of a smaller waistline, a tighter ass, and a still-shrinking PeriMenoPooch. I’m in the store looking for a pair of dark-wash jeans, preferably tight-fitting, to replace the tired, fading Seven for All Mankind jeans that I’ve been sporting for the last 10 years.

Straight from the airport and wearing my time-worn Seven jeans, I’m on a quest. This time, I get a tag team of two sales clerks, one a trainee. As chipper and darn-glad-to-be-of-service as ever (this is, after all, the flagship store), they ask if they can help me find something. I tell them dark wash jeans. They sized me up and said, “We have some higher-waist jeans over here…”

Before she/they could finish her/their sentence, I mustered a stern look, held a finger up and said, “Do NOT show me granny jeans.” This triggered a relaxation response in the two girls. They shed the finishing school posture, let out a simultaneous breath and erupted into conspiratorial giggles. Back to the Cavernous-Fitting-Room-with-the-Hostel V-Mood-Lighting I went.

Trying not to get my hopes up, I waited patiently for the girls to bring me a plethora of jeans to try. They showed up with six different pairs, and the fitting frenzy began.

Like my wedding dress, the first pair I tried on was a winner. Nervously standing in front of the communal mirror, the Hot Hot Husband had given his approval but quickly got the Don’t-Make-Me-Bitch-Slap-You look in his eyes when I asked him if the pants made my thighs look like sausages. Before he could react, Team Salesgirl walked in and I asked if I should go a size up. Immediately, they let out a simultaneous “Nooooo!” and looked at me the same way you’d look at a three-year-old about to light a plush toy on fire.

So the moral of the story is simply this: Age does not dictate what we should and should not wear, as long as it fits well and we feel damned hot in it. Not Personal Summer hot. I’m talkin’ Smoking Hot hot.

I’d love to hear about your retail experiences and what you do to dress with confidence. You never know – your story could help a sister out there who’s waging her own war against the Geriatric Fashion Pushers!

Music worth getting out of your chair for

On By PamelaIn Fitness, Health, Humor, Menopause, MusicLeave a comment

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I’m baaaaaack…..

Lots has happened since my futile attempt to take up an exercise program for Lent. Let’s just say that somewhere toward the end of the winding, DMV-like line in Purgatory is where I’ll be someday, thanks to no willpower and yet another Lenten promise biting the dust.

So when things get sedentary, the sedentary hire a personal trainer.

Yes, I am in my third week of personal training with Robert, who can see through my fake grimaces during crunches, and who is known to sneak up behind me while I’m sweating like a racehorse on the elliptical and increase the resistance by 25 percent. Robert, I know that’s what I pay you to do, but some mornings I HATE YOU.

But my intention was to make this an upbeat kind of a post, and so it is my pleasure to present you with my top 10 songs worth getting out of your desk chair for. I have added these to my MP3 playlist, and strongly encourage you to do the same if you need something besides a meeting with your boss to pull that soon-to-be tight ass out of the comfort of your plushy chair:

10. Judy is a Punk  – The Ramones

9. Fulaninha (Manga Bo Remix) –  Luisa Maita

8. Can’t Get You out of My Head – Kylie Minogue

7. Ray of Light – Madonna

6. Corona – Minutemen

5. I’m not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You – Black Kids

4. Fell in Love With a Girl – The White Stripes

3. Finally – CeCe Peniston

2. Transmission – Joy Division

1. Ecuador (Alternate Mix) – Forrest

So dance, dance, dance your ass into those new bikini bottoms, ladies! If nothing else, it’s good, clean, draconian-personal-trainer-free fun.

It was the vitamins! The vitamins, I tell you…

On By PamelaIn Beauty, Fitness, Health, Hot flash, Humor, Menopause, Perimenopause, Wellness, Women's HealthLeave a comment

Lady Gaga has her Little Monsters, I have my Little Demons. Actually, ‘Little Demons’ is a fancy term for ‘I Gotta Get a Handle on This Time Management Thing and Post a New Blog Entry.”

And now, Girlfriends, in easy-to-digest bullet points, the 411 since my last post about a successful (albeit icky) D&C procedure:

  • On Labor Day weekend last year, the Hot Hot Husband and I traveled north to the Emerald City (a.k.a. Seattle) to visit the step-grandkids, stepson and step-daughter-in-law (say that 10 times fast). In my haste to pack, I left behind the 10 or so vitamin and herbal supplements I normally take.
  • After five days sans inositol, multi-vitamins, ginko biloba, pine bark extract (reputed to diminish night sweats and hot flashes), turmeric, alpha lipoic acid (to counter the effects of aging), Omega-5 oil, vitamin D, calcium and vitamin E, I did a Cher and turned back time. That is, no more night sweats.
  • I couldn’t believe it!
  • I even experimented when we got home and took various combinations of vitamins. The night sweats and hot flashes returned.
  • And now for the legal disclaimer: The following is not intended to be medical advice and is not backed by scientific evidence; I’m merely sharing my own personal experience, which, obviously, may not be anything like your own personal experience, since you’re you and I’m me. So now that we’ve got that squared away…
  • I narrowed it down to the inositol, which is a distant cousin of the B-complex vitamins (Google it and ye shall see.). Once I banished the inositol, the night sweats stopped.
  • So the moral of the story, gentle reader, is that sometimes just leaving things well enough alone may be the best strategy.

Okay, now that we’re caught up to the present, I’ll stop with the bullet points.

I am still very much PeriWonderful. That is to say, I have not had a period in three months, so things they’re still a-changin’. I continue finding myself in the pesky predicament of synapses suddenly doing a cease-fire as I spew forth a Tourette’s-like tirade of profanity trying to find the word for ‘toaster.’ And my midsection? Well, let’s just say that yesterday as I was hopping into my Seven for All Mankind jeans, for the first time in my life, my flesh jiggled. Talk about a Jell-O surprise. I didn’t cry. I dropped and did 25. Sit-ups, that is.

So the road to Fitness at 45 (yep, I had a birthday while I was busy not blogging) begins this Wednesday. You Nice Catholic Girls out there may note that Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent. And this Nice Catholic Girl is not so much giving something up but taking something on. I am taking on a low-glycemic index diet (it worked wonders by the time my 30-year junior high school reunion rolled around last October – more on that in an upcoming post) and…drumroll….dusting the cobwebs off my gym membership and actually using it.

Can she do it? I think I can. And I hear that thinking you can is the first step.

If you want to join me in my 40-day journey to jettison the jiggle, I’d love to hear from you.

 

I heart my OB/GYN; I hate my gut

On By PamelaIn Fitness, Food, Health, Humor, Menopause, PerimenopauseLeave a comment

Preventive medicine is a beautiful thing, as is an overly-cautious OB/GYN. Yes, gentle reader, after submitting to a hysteroscopy and D&C, my lady parts are free of gynecological cancer.

And now for the hard part: During the two weeks between the procedure and learning the results, yours truly did some serious soul searching and made a few vows along the way. Here are some of them:

1. Drastically reduce my consumption of saturated fats (Read: cut [out] the cheese)

2. Bump up the veggie intake

3. Only consume organic, humanely-raised, antibiotic and hormone-free chicken or beef (Note: this was more the result of squirming through the film, “Food, Inc.”)

4. Reduce stress by renewing my yoga practice

5. Exercise for at least 30 minutes a day, six days a week

You’ll be pleased to know I’ve passionately embraced vows 1 through 4. It’s 5 that I just can’t seem to consummate.

Once upon a time–12 years ago to be precise–I was rockin’ a hard body on the beaches of Southern California, Miami and Brazil. Those toned thighs and tight abs did not come easy. I was working out four days a week with a personal trainer, and the other three days I was logging some major mileage on the treadmill.

And then I met the Hot, Hot Husband.

Before you accuse me of blaming someone else for my sloth, hear me out. The very weekend we had our first date, I ran 12 miles in a marathon training program, much to the chagrin of my doctor, who had advised me to stop running as I was beginning to develop lower back pain. That weekend marked the demise of my inner marathoner.

But that wasn’t all. Prior to life with the Hot, Hot Husband, I was a salad-for-dinner kind of gal, and while my fridge was always stocked with cheese, I probably indulged once every couple of days. All this changed once the Hot, Hot Husband and I began dating, moved in together and married. Weekdays, we would have a pre-dinner wine and cheese hour where we caught up on the day’s events and wound down from our respective long  and tedious workdays. Weekends found us at one of hundreds of fabulous local restaurants, indulging in cheese plates, Grand Marnier souffles, truffle risotto, bottles of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and obscene amounts of butter.

To be clear, I am not complaining. I wouldn’t trade my life with the Hot, Hot Husband for anything in the world. Well, maybe a wild night with David Beckham, but even that’s questionable as I hear he’s not exactly a scintillating conversationalist. All that aside, I take full responsibility for the dramatic shift in my eating habits.

To cut to the chase, over the course of the next 12 years I gave up running, took it up again as a stress reliever while working at a shitty job, overdid it (the job was supremely shitty, trust me), and ended up with plantar fasciitis. So for the past two years, I have sporadically stop-started various exercise routines, and my weight gain was turbo-charged in the past six months thanks to perimenopause.

Where that leaves me, dear reader, is writing this blog entry as a public declaration that today, May 12, 2010, marks the first day of my commitment to get a minimum of 30 minutes a day of exercise, six days a week.

So I hate to write and run, but I really do have to run. To the gym.

Anesthesia is Overrated

On By PamelaIn Fitness, Health, Hot flash, Humor, Menopause, Perimenopause, Uncategorized, Wellness, Women's HealthLeave a comment

Okay, so I’m feeling a little ripped off. Yesterday was my Icky Surgical Procedure and I was all psyched for the euphoria that was supposed to take me to higher heights once they started pumping the Happy Juice into my i.v.

I’m convinced they slipped me some Happy Juice Lite, because all I can remember was being led to the surgery room by the nurse, getting situated onto the bed, and the anesthesiologist telling me that he was about to give me something to help me relax. After that, nothing. I was in the middle of an very serious dream involving two fedora-wearing, 1950s-era businessmen with bad teeth when I heard a voice saying, “OK, time to wake up.”

Looking down at me were the Hot Hot Husband and the recovery room nurse. Giddy happiness as I was being led to the op room? None. Carefree laughter and cajoling with the op room staff? Zilch. Channeling my inner flower child after all was said and done? Nada.  So, what happened? All I got out of the Hot Hot Husband today was that the op room nurse told him I regaled her with a brief account of a “former employer” and, in the spirit of camaraderie, warned her that “Sometimes you have to work with assholes.” She wholeheartedly agreed. But of course I don’t recall one syllable of this lively discussion on the hazards of working for someone else, because my brain was in an alternate universe at the time.

But on to the meat of the matter (SQUEAMISH READER ALERT: skip this paragraph if medical details make you feel lightheaded). True to her word, my doc took four glamour shots of the inside of my uterus. Two showed velvety-smooth, blushing pink walls. The other two each revealed a filmy white growth clinging to the rosy surface of the uterus. If the Hot Hot Husband heard my doc right (and if he’s not lying so as “not to worry me”), she didn’t seem at all concerned about the growths and simply extracted them, shipping the tissue off to the lab. Now I get to wait until May 11 to find out the test results. The cool thing is I get to skip a period this month, since the doc squeegeed the walls of my womb and it’s brand-spankin’ clean until the next cycle begins.

For now I’m evaluating the artistic merits of posting photos of my inner sanctum on the blog, or maybe even using the images on our holiday cards this year.  Full disclosure—that last one was my doc’s idea. You can see why I love her. But I’ve settled on making a vow to get more exercise and finally buying that BPA-free bottle to take with me to the gym.  The wisdom to be gleaned, Gentle Reader, is that tests for cancer make one stop and re-think past insults to the body and resolve to live a cleaner life going forward. In the immortal words of that most famously feisty of southern belles, “Tomorrow is another day.”