Doing Everything Right

I am one of those fortunate enough to have health insurance through my place of employment. In order to pay lower rates I have various hoops I must jump through. Jumping through one of these hoops hooked me up with a lifestyle coach. Today I shared with her entrees from a food journal I began after our first discussion. I also kept track of my exercise and my weight (which didn't budge an inch). Her comments were to the effect that I was doing everything right - good diet and good exercise regiment; but, at my stage of life actually losing weight was very, very hard without taking aggressive and unhealthy measures (which she did not advise).

A part of me, naturally, yells, "It's not fair! I'm doing everything right!" I'm right of course, on the face of it this quirk of biology is out and out not fair. Of course, looked at another way, it is fair or even reasonable of us to expect our bodies not to show the wear and tear of years? Shouldn't we instead look for the beauty that is inherent at our own stage of life? I think perhaps this may be easier a decade from now when I've finally gotten through my head that the face that stares back at me in the morning is not my thirty-year-old face because...duh!...I'm not thirty and my waist is not the waist of someone who's never borne children because I'm a mother. As of now, I think that the past several decades have somehow slipped by without my notice and when I remember doing something or having a certain look or style and count up the years between then and now that those twenty years were full of stuff happening and all that stuff has made a mark in my memory and my body's memory. And that is something to be treasured and not denied.