Back when kids still played in the street, my sisters, cousins and I spent hours racing down to the end of that dead-end. In my memory, I was fast. Really fast. I would also say I won all the races. And while my memory of my win/loss record is sure to be called into question, (see I’d forgotten about that for more on my awful memory), one thing I do know for sure is that I loved the way I felt when I was running.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t confident enough at the time to transform that love into joining the track team or even taking running up as a hobby.

Fast forward 25 plus years and I still love the feeling of running.

When I imagine doing it.

In my mind.

Because when I’ve actually tried to do it, the feeling I get is not the same as the one I got years ago.

Running down that dead end street as a kid I felt fast, carefree and like I could run like that forever.

Now when I run I feel…my right hip, my left knee and the chafing of my construction grade sports bra against my back. *Sighs*

A younger cousin ran for a while and wrote about the hip pain she felt that led her to give up running. I now understand. And the truth is, no matter how much I want to run, me, on all fours (crying) on the corner of “bless her heart” and “she just wouldn’t listen” is not a good look. And not good to look at.  And hollering at the local hotties while sweating in the fetal position on the sidewalk is no way to meet a man.  Not one with teeth anyway. Trust me.

This is not to say that women runners in their 40s and beyond aren’t tearing it up on the side streets of America. I know they are – the bright light of their fitness glory blinds me each and every time they whiz by me on my WALKS. Kudos to them and those aerodynamic baby pusher things that have them navigating through the streets of Oakhurst like they’re training for decathlons.

As for me, I’ll keep watching the runners enviably from the sidelines. In the meantime I’ve got my walking and I’ve found a new workout muse – Michael Jackson The Experience. Michael Jackson and I have been tearing it up on my Wii.  If enough of you ask I’ll even video a session so you can get a good ab workout from laughing with me while you watch. No, not really.  Image: Not me running – Source:Flickr: Emanuel Leanza “Eleanza”

What’s your fit-at-forty story? Share in the comment section or on our Facebook page.

Editor’s Note: I wrote this early in 2011, a little past the halfway mark of my 40th year. It’s about how differently the 40 I’d planned was turning out to be. I’m 41 now, and a lot of this is still true. Maybe it will serve as a reminder that life isn’t in the planning, it’s in the living.

A funny thing happened on the way through 40 – nothing went the way I planned. Well almost nothing. But considering the previous 20 years, it really shouldn’t have come as a big surprise. One of my favorite quotes is by Joseph Campbell and it’s “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” So you’d think that by now I’d get it, yet I keep designing these elaborate plans only to have them morph into something they were probably supposed to be anyway.

Let’s see, my plan to grow the biggest-bad-ass-est blog to ever hit the blogosphere (and retire at the age of 40.5 from the tremendous rush of advertisers and sponsorships,) morphed into a nice, quiet little blog which gets pretty good notice, decent traffic and most importantly has a following of phenomenal woman (and men) of all ages, from all over the world.

My plan to be fit at 40 was sidelined by a ridiculously unbelievable but very real knee injury, and it’s taken longer to get back to the place I was before I tripped on the way to my printer (it’s funny now, but not so much when I heard my knee pop.)

Let’s see, there was also the plan NOT to go back to work but to make WAF my employer – the WAF being my employer thing worked out exactly as planned, the part about it paying me…not so much. Not yet anyway. But the ideas are still coming, the desire to hear and share stories remains, and hundreds of thousands of women turn 40 everyday – my audience, thankfully, isn’t going anywhere.

I also planned to return to Italy sometime during my 40th year, and while the year’s not over, as of today, the chances of that happening are slim to none. But like women turning 40, Italy isn’t going anywhere, and God willing I’ll get there one day soon.

So the funny thing that happened on my way through 40 is that I realized that sometimes the things we plan evolve while we’re in the middle of them, and we can go with the flow and evolve with them, or we can moan about the things that didn’t happen. I choose to appreciate the 600 plus Facebook followers the site now has and the truly awesome women I’ve met along the way. I‘ve chosen to use the knee injury as an opportunity to focus even more on a healthier lifestyle, not just physically, but spiritually and emotionally as well…and to be more careful when retrieving items from my printer. As for the job, I’m writing and editing and doing things I enjoy doing every day, for a company that’s making a real difference.  I’m slowly learning to move the life I’ve planned over to the side to make room for the life that’s waiting for me.

Update: That Italy trip, it’s happening in 2012 – God willing and the creek don’t rise

For weeks now I’ve been seriously rethinking this obsession I have with food and my weight. Specifically it’s occurred to me that for almost all of the past decade, my obsession with controlling (unsuccessfully I might add) what I eat and don’t eat has centered primarily on weight loss. This focus on weight and not on health has caused me to become unhealthier. Yo-yo dieting, pre-packaged diet meals, low carb, low fat, sugarless…you get the idea. My quest to lose weight devolved into me eating man made substitutes for food and came at the expense of eating food the way it was intended to be eaten.

It’s time for a change, a real change – an “I’m about to turn forty so I’ve got to start taking this seriously” change. I’ve been heading in this direction for years now, but eating for health was far down on the list, somewhere behind carb and calorie counting and fat monitoring. And while I’ve never been a lover of junk food and have always preferred fresh fruits and vegetables over sugary desserts – when it comes to food, the choices I make every day are made unconsciously, out of habit, and with very little regard to health and where my food is coming from.

In a nutshell (pun intended), clean eating is consuming food in its most natural state or as close to it as possible. It means eliminating as much processed foods from your diet as possible, and it means being conscious of the source of your food and the impact its production has on the environment. Militaristic clean eaters might have an issue with my definition, but that’s the definition that sums it up for me.  The Gracious Pantry has a great resource page about clean eating that you can access here. The turning point for me came when I watched the documentary Food, Inc. I’d absolutely recommend it to anyone curious about the source of their food – you will not be the same after watching it.

A year after test-driving my clean eating experiment I can say that I’ve adopted clean eating as a way of life.  A way of life differs from a diet in that it’s not something you ever “get off of.” So, on the (now increasingly rare) occasions that I don’t eat clean I, 1) enjoy it a lot less and 2) don’t belittle myself or consider it a diet catastrophe.  It’s not just a healthier way to eat, it’s a healthier way to think. Really, it’s a return to to the way my parents and grandparents used to cook and eat, before advertising and big business began convincing people that they had it all wrong.

Although I haven’t stuck to the $25 budget, I have been more conscientious about how much I purchase and what I’m paying for things, and in the long run that’s helped my overall budget.

So, what’s left is the weight loss. The good news is, the number on the scale is lower. The bad news is, not by much. As a child and teen I struggled with compulsive and emotional eating, and as a 41 year old woman I still do.  Like any habit/compulsion/addiction, it’s been a hard one to shake. But Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor apparently 41 years. Thankfully, I am a work in progress, not regress, and as long as I’m able, I’ll approach each day with the determination to become a healthier version of the person I was the day before. Anyone care to join me?

Grace

When I was younger and dumber I dated someone even younger and dumber than I was. He’d been dropping hints like crazy about what he wanted for Christmas – a boxed DVD set of his favorite action movie series. It wasn’t the most expensive gift I’ve ever given anyone, but it wasn’t what I’d call cheap either. His gift to me was. Cheap, that is.

Now I know all the adult concepts surrounding gift giving. It’s the thought that counts, better to give than to receive, yada yada yada. That Christmas, younger and dumber than me got me a CD. Not a CD player, a CD. It was a new release, so I guess I should have been more excited. I wasn’t.

It wasn’t that the CD was only about $10 – I’ve gotten hand-written notes I’ve valued far more. And it wasn’t that mediocre-boyfriend worked at an electronic superstore and probably grabbed the CD off the shelf on his way out to meet me that evening. Ok, maybe it was that. But what really got to me was that he, in essence, had asked for an expensive gift knowing all along that he had no intention of getting me anything in return. Petty? I don’t think so. His gift giving tendencies turned out to be an accurate indicator of his personality and the type of boyfriend he really was. I soon realized that I was dealing with someone who was selfish and more concerned about getting what he wanted than anything else.

Thankfully, now 40 and a little wiser, I’m aware that the biggest mistake I made in that relationship was not in giving an expensive gift to someone who gave little in return, but giving something much more valuable, my heart, to someone who hadn’t earned it.

During this holiday season, amidst all the frenzied gift giving and re-gifting, I’m trying to focus on the gifts we can’t really put a price on. The love of family, trust-worthy friends and the prayers and hopefulness that brings in the new year. I’m wishing the same for all of you. By the way, I still have the CD, the boyfriend however is long gone. As my grandmother would say – “good riddance to bad rubbish!”

Merry Christmas, Happy holidays and here’s to leaving all your bad rubbish behind in 2010!

My usual reaction when hearing that yet another teen or 20-something wanna-be D-lister has posted risque’ pics on Twitter or “accidentally” released a home-made porn, is to SMH and move on. It’s the age we live in and unfortunately this generation of young women seem to equate social media nakedness and sexuality with ultimate power. But wait. Demi Moore is from our generation. And she’s an A-list celebrity married to another A-list celebrity. So when I heard/saw that Demi Moore was once again jumping on the nakedness bandwagon I felt sad.

Here’s my disclaimer for all of you who believe that Demi Moore is a grown woman and has the right to do whatever she wants to with her body, her camera and her twitter account. You are absolutely right. And for the camp who says Demi Moore has a great body and she has every right to show it. You too are right. When I grow up, stop overeating and start working out every day, I want to have a body that wants to look like Demi Moore’s body. Maybe.

We knew Demi had a great body when she was G.I. Jane, and Viggo Mortensen battled her for the “shortest shorts in a move award.” And we knew it when Ashton Kutcher tweeted a picture of her underweared butt to his million plus followers. And just in case we still hadn’t gotten the message that Demi is 47 and hot, she tweeted the most recent bikini pics of herself.  We get it Demi, you’re 47 and hot. In all fairness to Demi, she pokes fun of herself too, like in this picture where she’s at the dentist missing a front tooth. But still the butt pics and the bikini pics bother me a bit.

I’ve been labeled a femi-nazi in the past because of my stance on women’s issues, particularly what I see as the over-sexualization and accessorization (I think I just made up two words) of women in today’s society. How many magazine covers do we need to see of fully dressed men groping half-naked women before we admit “somethin’ aint right.” This isn’t about being sexy or looking sexy, it’s about taking a step back and looking at how women in our society are portrayed – and how we allow ourselves to be portrayed. Most parents are telling their daughters NOT to put half-naked pictures of themselves on Facebook, Twitter etc. They’re telling them it’s just not a smart thing to do. And we understand that 16, 17, 20 something girls are naive, coming to terms with their sexuality and in the process will sometimes do things they regret. It’s almost a rite of passage. But at 47 we should be all “been there, done that” shouldn’t we? By our 40s we should realize that whatever “power” is gained by posing seductively for twitter pics or status updates is fleeting at best.

I can’t get inside Demi’s head to know what she was thinking when she posted the photos. Maybe she was just having a little fun. Maybe she works hard on her body and wants to show the world. And maybe there’s a little part of her that still needs the validation. The photos certainly put her name back on the entertainment talk show circuit for a minute. But here’s the thing Demi (because I know she’ll read this) – you don’t have to out-naked the Kim Kardashians, Miley Cyruses, insert naked-celebs-of-the-month-here – of the world, to get to where you’re going. You are already there. These young women want to get to where you are! They want the successful movie career, the great family, the loving husband. They want to imitate you, so why are you imitating them? Women in their 40’s are smart, savvy, beautiful, healthy and powerful. They are also sexy and don’t have to post semi-naked pics all over Twitter to prove it – to the world or to themselves. I just wish more of them would realize it.

Am I being too hard on Demi? What are your thoughts on Demi’s pics and on how women in their 40s are being portrayed in the media. Share your thoughts in the comment section or on our Facebook Fan Page.

When we hit our 40s it often seems easier and more practical to give up on our dreams. With kids to care for, bills to pay, and the reality of life confronting us every morning, stretching our imaginations to include a dream career, travel, entrepreneurship…sometimes feels like child’s play. But if you’ve always envisioned yourself doing something different and being something else, then those visions will always be there. If a vision follows you from year to year, maybe you owe it to yourself and that vision to pursue it, even in the midst of all your reality. And when I say you, I mean me.

But life inevitably stops us from pursuing those dreams. The bills do need to get paid. The kids do need to eat – and will for at least a few more years.  And your family, well, they’ll think you’re crazy. And then there are those times we construct our own roadblocks. Sometimes we play the role of prophet, projecting into the future a stream of what-ifs that end up paralyzing us. It’s like driving in fog. The key to success when driving in heavy fog is to pay attention to the road that’s right in front of you. If you try to look to what might be coming up miles down the road, you’ll take your eyes off of what is actually right in front of you now. Not good.

Pursuing a vision doesn’t mean abandoning your responsibilities, going into ridiculous debt and crossing your fingers hoping for some good luck. It doesn’t mean that your book will be the next Harry Potter or your screenplay the next Hurt Locker. It means that maybe today you write the next 100 words of your manuscript, or you register for the class at your community college, or you buy “The Dummies Guide to ‘Fill In The Blank’” to get you started ‘fill in the blank.’ And it means that when your manuscript gets rejected several times, as Julia Child’s and J.K. Rowling’s (12 times) were, you wipe your eyes, blow your nose and move on to the next publisher on your list.

So here’s the next 5 Question Challenge I’m sending out to the WAF community. I’m calling this one The Dream Catcher 5 Question Challenge. The goal is to get us closer to living our dreams. While some may dream of book deals and living abroad, others may dream of marriage and family or buying a home…the good thing about dreams is that they are our own and their possibilities are endless. The thing that ties our dreams together is that they are all valid and all worth having. So, in your dream life…

1.) What would you be doing?

2.) Where would you be doing it?

3.) Who would be sharing it with you/helping you get there?

4.) What’s/Who’s stopping you from living your dream life?

5.) What’s one thing you can do today to bring you one step closer to making it a reality?

You can answer the questions here in the comment section, on the Facebook Fan Page or on Twitter. If you’d like your responses to be posted anonymously, please email them to contribute@womenatforty.com.  And check out our first 5 Question Challenge and the many responses here.

It’s ironic that just before the TMPRI, I’d decided that since so much of what happens to us in life seem out of our control – jobs, lay-offs, the economy – we should take ownership of the things we actually can control. Eating and exercising was at the top of my “Things I can control” list. Or so I thought. The next day I broke the record for the most embarrassing knee injury story ever. Coincidence? I’m not sure.

Should I be reading anything into the fact that the day after I declare absolute control over something, I lose control over that very thing? Could it be that we’re not in control of as much as we’d like to think we are? Or is the lesson one in learning to go with the flow and making things work no matter how many forks there are in the road? I’m leaning towards the latter. And so I’m starting a new week with the hope of  walking at least two pain-free days and eating healthy all seven.

I’ve been fighting this weight/health/overeating battle most of my life, and although there are times I get very discouraged – especially when I read about metabolism beating a hasty retreat at 40 – I realize that the only day I’m guaranteed to fail is the day I wake up and say I’m not going to try. So, fork in the road be damned. I’ll walk a little slower, do a bit of weight training as a commenter suggested, and see where this fork takes me.

Have you experienced any unexpected forks in the road? How are you dealing with them, and what’s the lesson you’re learning? Share your thoughts in the comment section, or on our Facebook fan page.

Critics have blasted the 36-year-old’s writing as sophomoric and uninspired. Stephen King (hardly Tolstoy himself) has said of Meyer, she “can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.” And although I’m in no position to play literary critic, repeated descriptions of how beautiful Edward is does get old really quickly. But what can’t be argued is that Meyer’s writing resounds with fans – 85 million copies and millions of dollars don’t lie. And while one’s ability to make boat-loads of money isn’t an indication of talent, (Paris Hilton, every single Kardashian, The Situation and his Oompa-Loompa roommates for example), the money is certainly proof that Meyer has tapped into something. Something that, if you watched the Twilight episode of Oprah, transcends age and sex, and probably gender too – although the men are even more ashamed of their Twi-hardness than I am.

So what’s the appeal, particularly to “middle-aged” women? An interview in USA today with a 35 year old fan of the series says it pretty well,

“…as an adult who has faced reality, it’s escapism of a different kind, remembering those first twitches of falling in love and reliving it through Bella.” The article continues, “There’s a loss of romance, of mystery, of the holding back of desire and cherishing of a woman,” she says. “Young girls can’t find swains who will adore them and worship them. It only happens in books. They long to live in an erotically charged fantasy. Older women know it doesn’t happen.”

But they sure like to read about it.

We sure do. It’s escapism at its finest. A Romeo and Juliet where no one dies. A modern romance where the woman doesn’t get naked within the first 15 minutes, and the men (who aren’t trying to kill you) are gentlemen. Who couldn’t use a bit of that these days?

Am I the only closet WAF Twilight Fan? I can’t be. If you’re secretly carrying a torch for the series or anything else that you’re supposed to be “too old for,” share your thoughts in the comment section. Don’t leave me hanging ladies…

Needless to say the whole incident put a monkey wrench in my plan to be fit at forty. I had finally found a morning rhythm, getting up early and walking anywhere from 2-4 miles daily. I was even at the point where I was, wait for it… enjoying my walks. And then this.

I wish I could say I busted my knee hiking, preparing for a marathon or secretly rendezvousing with my mystery man one night. I wish I could say that’s how it happened. You know what really happened? I got up to take a sheet of paper off the printer *hangs head in shame* That’s it. There was no earthquake while I was reaching for the paper, and my printer didn’t start doing something out of a Transformers movie. I just stood up.

In all fairness to me, I got up really, really quickly and did an intricate kind of Matrix move to reach the printer. Because you know, you can never pull a sheet of paper off the printer fast enough.

I don’t feel too bad though, a friend recently posted a picture of himself on Facebook wearing a neck brace. And while he did sustain his injury engaging in strenuous physical activity, his Facebook status sums it up, “I got all Evel Knievel on my mountain bike, but instead of the Grand Canyon, I attempted a speed-bump sized root in the Forest Preserve. The root won.” He’s also 40. Is this some kind of trend?

I hope to get back to walking next week. But why is it so much harder to get back into a thing than it is to get out of it? Nevertheless, I have every intention of doing it. I’ve only got 9 months left on my quest to be fit at 40, and I’m determined not to let the root win.

Read more about our plans to be Fit at Forty, in the Women at Forty’s Health & Beauty section. And if you’re on your own quest to be Fit at Forty, we’d like to hear from you. Email your story to contribute@womenatforty.com.

So I’m completely shamazed (check your urban dictionary) when people my age have vivid memories of things that happened decades ago. I guess I do remember some things. I remember everything that’s ever made me throw up – pumpkin seeds, horror movies, that guy who walked up to me one night in New York, announced he’d just gotten out of prison, and proceeded to lick my face.

And, even though I may not remember dates and places, I clearly remember how important events and situations made me feel. I remember the mix of sadness and excitement I felt at my high school graduation. I remember how I felt when I got the news that my grandmother died. I remember my first crush, my first kiss, and my first “what the hell was I thinking going out with him?”  conversation.

So maybe I’m not a lost cause. Maybe some people go through life remembering all the details while others remember how they felt while all the details were happening around them. Or maybe I’m just getting old.

Just Me is Grace’s weekly, sometimes daily – depending on how interesting her week’s been- personal contribution to Women at Forty.