Life Stages

Keeping Your Equilibrium at Any Age

Reaching and maintaining equilibrium is not done by force of heredity; it's something we cultivate through the way we live. Genetics plays a part, of course, and balance certainly does seem easier for some. But looks can be deceiving; some may actually mask unhealthy habits. Consider the proverbial model who eats nothing but burgers and pizza yet doesn't gain a ounce. Genetics may be protecting her insides—for now—from this assault (if not from our envious glares.) But, just as likely, such a woman may in fact be less well than one who must pay much more attention to what she consumes, how much she moves, etc. Genetic predisposition to slenderness is not, as I have said, disproportionately distributed among French women. Most who appear to live in healthy balance are actually working at it. But that work has been made infinitely easier by wise cultural conditioning and practice.

Unfortunately for all women—see under "life, unfairness of"—the equilibrium we work to achieve shifts as we age. If we don't continue paying close attention to our bodies, our healthy balance will be pulled out from under us. But despair not: attention and incremental adjustment throughout life are easier than big corrections following long intervals of imbalance. Alertness and rapid response can allow us to enjoy a long life of pleasures while never getting fat.

Still, it does happen. We can be eating well and staying active, etc. for years, when, bang!: force majeure. This is true for all humans, but especially women, whose weight and silhouette can be radically altered by three major physiological and psychological events, in which hormones run amuck: adolescence, pregnancy and menopause. All three present a serious potential for troublesome weight gain, and it's better to plan for them, rather than eat first and ask questions later.

Age 17-35

For many, the twenties seem like the time of infinite possibility, although in retrospect, a woman will always idealize her thirties. Late teens and early twenties are inevitably a tough transition, as they were for me. College, starting a career, even a family. This great stress comes just as we have already exhausted everyone's patience with teenage angst. I've met countless women in their twenties suffering weight problems on account of not having yet grown into adult habits of eating, drinking and moving. It's particularly painful to see them suckered by unsustainable diets—to which faith in technology, common in today's youth, appears to make them especially vulnerable. A little fuzzy science is a dangerous thing. They also tend to want results timed to social events, of which there are many for the predominantly single demographic. And so the idea of ten pounds in two weeks is extremely seductive. Making matters worse, most haven't learned anything about how to cook. If this is you, I recommend the French woman's full Monty: a month of nutritional inventory, magic leek soup, short- and long-term recasting. Now is the time to get serious about putting away childish things.

The freedom most enjoy during the 17-35 period can also invite seemingly grown-up excesses: rich meals out (for business and adult courtship rituals), and especially excess alcohol consumption among the freshly legal and unsupervised. For this demographic most overeating occurs after 8:00 p.m., when you should be most en garde. It's important to develop hunger pacifiers for the times leading up to lunch and dinner, and the twilight zone before bed.

Muscle mass and bone density should be at its peak. Ironically though, now is the time when most of us fall into a destructive pattern of sedentary lifestyle, fostered by the fact that more and more jobs require us to sit at a desk all day for the first time in our lives. The habits of movement, the principle of faire cent pas (walk 100 steps) can be a help here, though the girl in us still wants to blast away her sins in stairmaster marathons. Eventually this gets too boring or exhausting, and the roof caves in on her precarious equilibrium. The sooner you learn the French woman's incremental approach the easier and more pleasurable will be the rest of your life. Try to transform exercise time into entertainment; look for activities and exertions that amuse you, especially if you can do them with friends. There are a thousand stops on the road from tri-athlete to couch potato. It is an absolute must to start walking at least 30 minutes a day during these years. Swimming and yoga are also wonderful if you have the inclination. But in any case, you must not let muscle tone and flexibility go until the next stage, when they will be much harder to recover. Ditto metabolism, which naturally declines beginning as early as 25!

For pregnant women, fat accumulation is natural and tends to occur mainly in the first months to build the body's reserves for breast feeding. The risk of post-partum weight problems is much greater if you are slightly overweight before you become pregnant. So before you start managing an equilibrium for two, it's a good idea to get your own in order. Don't fall back on the inevitability theory: "What's the use? In 3 months I'll be big as a house anyway."

Breastfeeding is good for the baby, but it's also good for the mother, putting the fat reserves to their intended use for milk production. A month of breast feeding can do wonders trimming the silhouette especially below the waist, reducing what we call culottes de cheva ("riding breeches," what you call saddle bags); losing those pregnancy thighs is a true obsession with French women. The exertions of motherhood can be a great help if you manage the stress sensibly.

Age 35-55

"Not older but wiser" is a hollow consolation only for those who expect it to be. French women are proverbially and in fact at their peak in these years—we truly believe it. You can too. If you have cultivated well-being up to this point, you are primed to reap to full advantage the experience and awareness of our pleasures, including food and sex. At the same time, as you must know, there are agents provocateurs conspiring against your hard-won equilibrium, including greater responsibilities of work and family. This may be the time for caring for both parents and children—a big squeeze. Gone is much of our "free time." And even worse, we face a relatively rapid decline in metabolism. French women recognize this time as both peak and crunch, and the great majority do not surrender.

Denied youth's seemingly infinite forgiveness, you now face the moment when lack of real commitment to healthy eating and living will show. It is no time for what mass-marketed diet programs offer. Even if you lose weight, you'll gain wrinkles and look gaunter as tissue loosens with rapid water loss. And sleep beckons as never before. Remember when you could stay out all night and still go to work looking OK? Adieu to all that. Sleep deprivation shows big time in this stage and becomes a major contributor to weight gain. Just accept that the days of burning the candle at both ends with impunity are over.

Beginning at 35, think in terms of a "rule of seven." With every seven years hereafter, your body is changing enough to require an inventory and overhaul of habits. Don't wait for round number birthdays, which can often induce paralysis and trauma just when everyone is watching. At 35 digestion begins its slowdown, and you can't eat as you did in your 20s; if typical, you will start trading a half-pound of muscle for a half-pound of fat every year. At 42 hormone levels begin to drop until menopause, at, say, 49, when the serious loss of bone density also begins. For this reason, now is the time French women, life-long walkers, also pick up weights. Resistance training is the surest way to reverse the muscle-to-fat trade-off that more than anything sets the 20-somethings apart from their elders. It also retards bone loss and the slow down in metabolism (remember: muscle burns more calories than other tissue types, even at rest).

Now, you don't want to over-do it, as Colette unfortunately did. Start out with 3-5 pound weights and favor slow movements controlled by your muscles through the full range of motion. Momentum does not tone your body; tone comes from slowly controlled reps. Muscle bulk comes only from more serious weights. If you discover the gym as something you can enjoy— never a necessity if you stick to small weights (safe at any speed) and keep up your walking and multiplying your little exertions—engage a trainer for at least a session or two. As I still detest gyms, I have no advice on the ever-more complicated devices they offer; they look like weapons systems. While you treat the upper body with free weights, do morning sit-ups for the mid-section. Do them religiously. And for the legs, I have but one word: stairs.

One mustn't underestimate the profound psychological and emotional impact of these years, especially if they include the very common traumas of divorce or losing a parent. It's a stage when thoughts inevitably turn to our own mortality, too. You can either become morose, or you can apply your heightened awareness to cultivating pleasures. (I don't have to tell you which French women choose.) Having out-grown the youthful demand for immediate gratification puts you at an advantage for losing weight like a French woman. Also, having tried many things by this age, you know better than ever what delights and what doesn't. No one can appreciate little things as much as someone who has done a little living. But you can't ignore the debit column: the demands, even the reversals of fortune, may push you toward the zero-degree of pleasures. Don't go there. If you can't name your pleasures, chances are you've surrendered too many of them. It's time to start cultivating.

For me, these years saw the introduction of new types of food. I now love soy nuts. There has also been a slight decrease in portions and frequency of certain known "offenders." I've reduced my chocolate fix from daily to perhaps three times a week, and I also eat red meat less often. But doing it gradually, one doesn't notice a pinch. It's been during these years, too, that I have added the 15 flights of stairs a few times a week to my scheduled walk. For me those twenty minutes a day have been key to holding my ground.

Dr. Miracle advised that if you look healthy at 20 that's the weight you should keep for the rest of your life.

Here are the basics for making that perfectly reasonable goal a reality.

 

• Increase your proportion of fruits and vegetables as compared with other food types, especially fatty and sugary ones, which you should aim to reduce anyway if you consume them frequently. Even a sweet-tooth will re-equilibrate if conditioned slowly. Practice "less is more" more aggressively, avoiding meaningless calories and saving them for real pleasures. Enjoy them with attention.
• Try to pay more attention to the rhythms of your life, daily, weekly, monthly. Bring a mental dimension to your physical movement. Awareness reduces stress, promotes a feeling of well being. Practice more controlled breathing.
• Carry water everywhere you go and increase your intake to at least two quarts a day.
• Start taking a multivitamin with food.
• Learn to say no, with an eye to saying yes to something else.
• Build small rest periods into your day. (I used to go to parties and dinners straight from work; now I go home beforehand, take a shower and do a few minutes of meditation. Result: I face the evening with renewed energy.) Take a breather at your desk: eyes closed and controlled breathing.
• Try to find new interests. Life seems fuller with novelties, and too many women depend on interests of their youth to see them through their middle years. Yesteryear's novelties may be today's rut. Relatively few of your possible activities have been closed to you on account of age. Curiosity, no less than openness to pleasure, is not the exclusive property of the young.
• Your skin will get dryer and lose some of its elasticity, but you don't need surgery or stem cell therapy. You do need plenty of moisturizer and some sunscreen, even on days the sun doesn't shine. Many French women, myself included, wear dark glasses whenever outdoors. It prevents fine lines while enhancing our mystery

Age 55-77+

With increased life expectancies, this stage, dismissed as old age just a few decades ago, is now for many one of the most vital times of life. (Better late than never.) Well being, while not rare, is, however, more fragile in these years, when health problems that might roll off a younger woman's back can have much more serious effects. For this reason, pampering oneself is important. You must acknowledge the positive form of "selfishness," which is not self-absorption but a more refined and serene attentiveness to needs, comforts, and now limitations of the body. After 50, most women have the good fortune of clearly recognizing the things they truly care about. It's a time in life when we focus on those things, improve our lives through simplification and get real about the things to be let go. In some ways, it's when we learn to say no, not out of self-denial but because we know better. The mind is never a stronger ally in wellness. Take it easy. This does not mean spending the rest of your days in sweats. It's not the time to be négligée (in the sense of negligent, not underwear) but soignée (elegant and groomed).
This time can be full of pleasure but graceful aging requires some sensible renouncements. In a society obsessed with youth—always has been, but it used to be 20-year olds not pre-teens—that's not always easy, and will require all the resources of self-awareness you have cultivated. Aging can be a crisis for any woman, but those who do it well are those who end up accepting it as natural. Mourning youth is perfectly natural too, but some, like Hamlet, mourn too long. Acceptance is rewarded with the realization that life can go on wonderfully well.

The well-tempered mind is what saves us from dwelling too much on the past (regret and loss) or the future (no longer unlimited). The same mind and breathing exercises that we use to regulate proper eating, help us concentrate on the moment and living properly. These years must be taken a day at a time. Every day is a bonus. With acceptance of one's age and time remaining comes gifts: a wise reluctance to waste little moments of happiness (whose preciousness the young often fritter), peace of mind that comes with tolerance, as well as patience and less resentment of the world. If you do it right, time (which might seem an enemy) will seem more an illusion.

Physically, the worst offense is trying to be une vieille qui veut faire jeune (an older woman who decks herself out like a young thing): mini skirts, bikinis, too much make up. They are not unheard of in France, where occasionally the well-preserved fall prey to the temptation of flaunting it. But there's nothing lovely about a 70-year-old-woman at the market in short shorts no matter how great her legs are. Modesty is de rigueur the more impractical concealing one's age becomes. At that point being natural is the best revenge. Surgery and rouge pots suggest one is not bien dans sa peau, which, as we say, is the essence of a French woman's mystique.

The French rightly acknowledge there is a particular mystique to une femme d'un certain âge, an expression with layers of meaning including respect but also worldliness and hints of seduction. Our media have no trouble projecting the sexiness of Catherine Deneuve and Charlotte Rampling. Here the difference between France and America is amazing. In Europe, men naturally find women of this age group desirable, even sexy, and are often caught turning around to look at one entering a restaurant. If she is eating alone they are more likely to flirt with her than pity her. It's inconceivable in New York, where eye contact seems to have gone the way of smoking.

If you are alert, aging seems to present you with its own common-sense instructions. But here are some adjustments to consider:

 

• Practice some routine physical exertion all your life, and you'll be in better shape to continue. But if you haven't, it truly is never too late to start. And the little stroll, which may have seemed a trivial improvement to your younger self, may seem more a life-affirming ritual. A reliable daily accomplishment.
• Revisit your food selection, and revise again in favor of more fruits and vegetables. Have fruit, especially berries, at least twice a day in season. Try to keep meat to once a week and fish to twice a week; eggs are fine but no more than one a day, lentils, green vegetables and salads, potatoes (avoid mashed and fries), brown rice, and bien sûr, a glass or two of wine a day. Keep eating yogurts religiously.
• Meals and portions tend to get smaller automatically as the older body reaches satiety faster. Sometimes the problem is not eating too much but too little, and suffering deficiencies. When having meat and fish, three ounces is sufficient for good nutrition. Adding the afternoon goûter is a good idea. A simple flan is a good source of protein and calcium. In fact, you may want to out-French the French and consider 5 smaller meals instead of 3 standard-size ones. Because their taste buds are no longer as sharp, seniors grow bored with their foods more quickly. It makes more sense to eat smaller portions than to force feed a younger woman's diet, as sometimes happens.
• Be attentive to how easily you digest. Rich desserts may no longer like you as much as you like them. Reserve for special occasions and have little portions.
• Lubricate skin morning and night. Don't forget your hands—moisturize after every wash. (Old-fashioned Vaseline Intensive Care lotion is fine. No need for outrageously expensive creams with genetically engineered ingredients).
• Another remarkably therapeutic change: add two tablespoons of walnut oil to your daily diet. Studies have suggested benefits for mood, blood flow and heart rhythm. It's also an anti-inflammatory. This would have interested my relatives in Provence who recognized this stuff as a magic potion. They used walnut and hazelnut oil frequently but sparingly (it's expensive) on salads throughout life. Both are also wonderful new flavors if you haven't tried them.
• Water, water, water! I know I am harping, but after 80 years of living, hydration is a life-and-death matter. When my mother reached her 90s, her doctor, not Dr. Miracle, alas, but of the same school, reminded me that at her stage the two greatest dangers can be dehydration and sudden weight loss. Je n'ai pas soif (I'm not thirsty) is a common refrain among the elderly, but following his instructions she emptied one glass every 3 hours.