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When Size Matters
How a silent health struggle in my 60s taught me the importance of listening to my body
For all of my adult life, I’ve been pretty health conscious, paying attention to my body and trying to do my best by it.
I hike it, feed it good food, ensure it gets enough sleep, and try to keep it strong.
Most of the time, I listen to it. After all, no one knows our bodies like we do, right? This is why it is so strange that I ignored what, deep down, I knew was a problem.
The Beginning
Let me give you a bit of a pre-amble (short, I promise). I am a 64-year-old woman who went through menopause at age 52. I breezed through it with a few irritating hot flashes, but nothing major.
But, shortly afterward, I noticed I was starting to pack on a little belly weight. It didn’t really impact my day-to-day life, but it did piss me off because, as I said before, I am a pretty disciplined person. I chalked it up to “Life as a Post-Menopausal Woman” and just got on with things.
In Denial
But my little Buddha belly just kept getting bigger — a little round hard ball of fat.
I had cared for my mother for the last few years of her life before she succumbed to…