Yesterday, as my teenaged daughter, her father and I drove home from our annual New Year's in New York, I halfheartedly brought up the idea of resolutions.
No one bit.
I myself love resolutions. Making them that is; not necessarily following through. Like all resolution-makers, my heart is always in the right place on December 31st. It's just my head (and stomach) that shift gears later.
For me, resolutions fall into the same category as brand new datebooks (yes, I'm still an analog girl when it comes to my beloved New Yorker magazine desktop planner, an annual Christmas gift from my husband). It's all about the clean slate. The chance for a perfect (well, at least a perfect-er) new year.
I'm not sure when I made my first of these infamous lists, probably fourth grade when I started keeping a diary. At that point, my dreams were pretty ... well ... dreamlike. I wanted to write the (next) great American novel (my best friend Naomi and I had discovered Gone With the Wind by then). I wanted to be an actress. Or a singer. Or a flight attendant.
By junior high, my annual goals were less lofty. In fact, they were less everything. Just plain less. From then on, the first page of all my journals began with a list of resolutions that began with ...
1. Lose weight
Oh sure, sometimes I would shake it up a bit and pretend to be concerned with my health ...
1. Exercise regularly and eat a more healthy diet
But, the subtext was always the same ...
1. Lose weight
Now, in my fabulous (and, let's face it, fatter) 50s, I find it astonishing that my teeny tiny teen self was worried about her weight. What I wouldn't give to fit into those Calvin Klein size 8s! Today, I'm in NYDJ ("Not Your Daughter's Jeans"), and we'll just gloss right over what size they are.
It's not like I haven't tried to stay slim. By the time I was 16, my daughter's age, and long into my college and young adult years, I worked at it. Take it from me, I've tried a multitude of diets and diet aids, such as ...
• TAB (was there ever a more disgusting taste?)
• The plain yogurt diet
• The cucumber diet
• The egg drop soup diet
• The pear diet
• The write everything down in a little notebook diet
• Tiger's Milk protein bars
• Fasting
• Carnation Instant Breakfast
• Dexatrim (over the counter, so it had to be safe, right?)
• Bran muffins
• Salads with day-glow diet French dressing
• A 21-Day Cleanse
• Vegan eating
• Vegetarian eating
• "Pescetarian" eating
• The Zone and Weight Watchers
• No carbs, low carbs, all carbs
The latest craze is IF, Intermittent Fasting. I did this for three days and finally came to my senses with a big, fat "WTF?" that would have made my texting teen proud.
Yesterday, I was hoping for a more enthusiastic response to my resolutions suggestion (in fairness, my daughter was listening to "American Authors," her new FAVORITE BAND EVER, OMG!). But, I am so happy that she isn't obsessing about her weight. She is fit, she is active, and she really enjoys food. Really, really. In this, as in many things these days, I should take a lesson from her.
So, in that spirit, here is my number one resolution for 2014:
1. Have more fun
And number two?
2. Invest in another pair of NYDJs
Happy New Year!
If you enjoyed this post, order a copy of my new book Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.
If you have coffee (or cocktails, especially cocktails) with women of a certain age, at some point in the conversation you'll hear these three words:
"My body's changed."
Generally, this statement is accompanied by hand gestures that communicate helplessness at best (hopelessness at worst). Our bodies are changing and I'm here to tell you that it's frustrating as hell.
When I was younger (and thinner), I used to wonder why so many older women wore caftans and muumuus. Now, I know.
Because their jeans don't fit anymore!
I was never skinny-skinny, but I was fairly fit and trim. (Actually, looking back at photos, I didn't realize how fit and trim I was. What's that funny eCard? "I wish I was as thin as I was the first time I thought I was fat.") Nevertheless, I used to have some trouble buying jeans. Invariably, the hips would be too tight or the waists would be too big. When I did find a pair cut to my ... um ... proportions, I would happily wear them day-in, day-out until they pretty much disintegrated.
Until this past week, I had two pairs of jeans in my closet. Neither is threadbare and they are — allegedly — my size. But, something's happened. You guessed it ...
"My body's changed!"
Suddenly, the thighs, hips and derriere are baggy. Under any other (pre-menopausal) circumstances, this would be good tidings of great joy and much celebration would ensue. But now, any self-satisfaction is cancelled out by the fact that in both cases, the waists are too tight. Like way too tight. Like I can barely breathe and I've developed that most dreaded of all figure features: the muffin top.
OMG.
I realize that my evolving shape is not the end of the world. But, c'mon. On top of internal heat waves, I have to buy new jeans? Not fair. Not cheap. And not even easy. Every pair I've tried lately has given me the same issues. Too tight where they used to be loose. Too loose where they used to be tight.
My sixteen-year-old daughter, meanwhile, has at least a dozen different pairs of jeans, each of which fits her like a glove. Abercrombie, Delia's, Aeropostale, Urban Outfitters ... it doesn't matter. She's like a one-teen Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. All things denim magically wrap themselves around her perfectly.
This past weekend, we set off on our first college visits with some good friends. The rest of the long weekend was spent shopping together. At Nordstrom Rack, we found a display of marked-down NYDJ. For those of you unfamiliar with the brand, it stands for "Not Your Daughter's Jeans." They were 45% off. They were unabashedly "mom jeans." But, I had reached the point of denim desperation. I broke down and tried them on.
OMG.
What a difference a cut makes. That and some stretch. The NYDJs actually fit my waist and my butt and my hips and my thighs. At the same time! They're cut higher than anything you'd find in my daughter's closet. And, suffice it to say, that's fine by me. As you can imagine, I bought them. In fact, I'm wearing them now, with an embroidered blouse and a pair of classic Frye boots.
I definitely don't (definitely, definitely don't) look sixteen. But I look pretty damn good for 51.
What can I say? These are not my daughter's jeans. Truth.
If you enjoyed this post, order a copy of my new book Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.
