Belly Fat

Is it Womenzwerk to obsess about belly fat?

I've been contemplating belly fat today. Which is not to say I've been contemplating my navel, who can see it anymore anyway? I see lots of men walking around with much larger bellies than most women I know, yet I rarely hear them sitting around talking about belly fat like it's one of the amazing wonders of the world.

Middle age women are particularly prone to ponder the rolls around their middles. My fellow moms on the sidelines at baseball games had a theory about this particular placement of pudge. One of them, a medical professional by trade, told us that it is a scientifically proven fact that worry and anxiety causes us to secrete hormones that go right to our middles. As we anxiously watched our sons in tense games, we could literally feel our bellies grow. It was comforting in a way to know that it was caused by such a noble thing as caring about our children.

Another woman friend of mine recently told me that it is all water weight and there are pills for that. She, too, offered comfort in the form of a firm solution for a problem that only menopause could create. Nothing to worry about. Just a natural symptom of my life stage.

I really doubt that the men I know even discuss their bellies with each other, much less actively pursue theories about why they have them.

But then I read an article in the October issue of More magazine (yes this is a plug...great magazine, interesting articles) that really startled me. It said that nearly half of the women coming in for issues with eating these days are middle aged women. They come in with aneroxia and bulemia but more often for something called disordered eating. Many of them start by getting serious about healthy eating or cooking healthy foods and start to obsess. Some of them start with diet and excercise routines. One story told of a woman who could not eat lunch. Another of a woman who could only eat three or four foods.

True confessions here...I'm a recovered anorexic which I don't think I've written about here (but maybe I have). It hit me when I was a teen which is the more typical than hitting women in middle age. I remember every bit of it distinctly. I knew exactly how many calories every activity burned up and how many calories every bite contained and my life was a constant mathematical equation to balance the two. Pounds fled off me without me even trying, or so I thought. I was far gone before I knew what was happening and it took years in the 70's for anyone to diagnose the problem. Had I lost much more weight I would have likely not survived it. And now I hear that women my age are going through this and it makes me very sad.

Because I know that belly fat may be a trigger for disordered eating but it's not the cause. No matter what the doctors think, eating obsessions have alot more to do with feeling out of control, overwhelmed and hopeless. Food becomes the only thing that can be controlled in life. And nothing feels more out of control than middle age as we physically, mentally, and emotionally juggle the responsibility for so many people. Our mothers used to sneak a midday martini, and I'm sure many women fill the void with too much wine still these days. But this new phenomenon of disordered eating is scary to me. Because it isn't happening to men. What women are experiencing at midlife is a different stress, a different out of control situation and a lot less hope. And that's just not right.

So what can we do about it, ladies? Let's make it Womenzwerk to turn this trend around!

Emotional Harvest

Is fall the natural time for reaping what we sow?

All around me today the farmers are harvesting. I see them intent on their work, their children riding along because these are gentlemen farmers with day jobs as accountants and such. Still, the work of the harvest must be done and the splendor of this fall day is the perfect time. It reminds me that it's time for me to harvest the emotions of my life, something we should all do every so often, and send them up to the Universe for consumption.

I think I'm finally ready to let go of the emotions surrounding sending my son off to college. Every thought and emotion that has swirled up in me for the past few months seems to be clearing out now. I can go a day without texting him (almost). I cleaned his room, his bathroom and the spaces he claimed in the guest room and basement. I took apart the shrines made for him for his graduation party...the photo montage and the wall of jerseys. It's time to take all of that love and worry and fear and anxiety and clear it out. Oh, the love continues. But it's the letting go kind of love that I have with my daughters. It's just the next level. And it's time.

Today I sat home nursing a flu-like thing that has been on me for a week. At first I ignored it and thought it would go away. But I think my body is catching up with my heart and simply needs to let it all go. Like the fall harvest, everything in its season. I sowed seeds for years that have resulted in good things. Now it's time to serve it up and find out what my next season's crops should be. The empty nest kind of crops should be very interesting and hopefully very fruitful.

So as always I want to know if women handle all of this differently than men. Well, of course, we do. It's not the men making the graduation shrines, packing the kids up for college with hangars and carpeting and extra underwear and quarters. We definitely feel raw emotions in the process that men seem to handle differently. But I think both men and women need to take the time for the harvest, recognize harvest season when it arrives and take the time to let it happen. Maybe women can lead the way to identifying and supporting the process because of that natural intuitive awareness of things. I think that is Womenzwerk.

What do you think...should women lead by example and regularly acknowledge that it's harvest time?