Welcoming 2025

aka the year I turn 50

I’m being a little obsessive about this birthday, which isn’t until December, but it’s the first birthday I’ve had, well, feelings about. All of my life the majority of my friends have been older than I, so I’ve been hearing people complain about getting older forever. Now it’s my turn—but I’m not complaining exactly. It’s just a new feeling of I’m the old one now. And it’s such a significant number: half a century. How can one not have feelings?

At the beginning of 2024, I made a promise to myself to learn how to be someone who exercises. I’ve always been an active, fairly healthy person who hasn’t had a lot of struggles with weight and thus never learned how to be self-disciplined physically, but as I’ve cruised through my 40’s much faster than I would have liked, I’ve realized I can’t have the same laissez-faire attitude about my body anymore—not if I want the second half of my life to be fulfilling. As women go through their second puberty— menopause—they lose muscle, bone density, and overall strength and metabolism plummets at an alarming rate. Waif is no longer a default, nor was it ever healthy to begin with, and I think that’s the mindset change I needed and went through all of last year. For the first time I longed to feel strong rather than look skinny.

In February, I signed up with a trainer in the hopes it would make me feel confident that I could get stronger with the accountability I needed to stick to it. You may remember my post about how she gave me 3lb weights. I couldn’t plank for even ten seconds. It was mildly humiliating, but it was all I could do. But it would never get easier after that day, so I told myself you either start now or it’s only going to get harder. I worked with her for about three months—an expensive, but valuable investment in my future. Then in July, my husband and I joined the gym and have been going 3-4, sometimes 5 days a week ever since.

Now, nearly a year later, I’m up to 10-12lb weights. A 30-second plank is suddenly possible. I’m gently jogging on the treadmill and not dying. Seeing this dramatic change, even in the long amount of time it’s taken to get here, is incredibly encouraging. I CAN be a person who exercises, and not only that, but a person who enjoys it. That was actually the biggest hurdle, but after about three weeks in the gym it became routine. It altered my brain chemistry in the best way possible. Now when I can’t go or even get a walk in, I’m super disappointed.

I still have a long way to go, however. I still have major lower back challenges to work with. I wonder if my core will ever improve considering it’s pregnancy-induced destruction, but I keep working at it. I’m now determined to be in the best shape of my life by 50. I think another year of this focus will make that happen. And to encourage myself to not give up, and to keep striving for better, we signed up for a Spartan Sprint in September.

So, yeah, I may not see 50 after all…

But anyway, all of this to say if approaching this milestone birthday is what it takes for me to take my physical health more seriously, so be it. One of the benefits of having older friends or close family is that you see what works and doesn’t work. Probably one of the reasons I’ve always gravitated to people who are older than I—I value them and I learn from them. And those who have stayed active have far more rewarding lives.

My word of the year for 2025 was: Less.

I wasn’t sure how to feel about that because I’m the kind who always wants more. Not stuff, but experiences, possibilities, opportunities. But now I see what “less” can mean for me. Less distraction (quit socials months ago), less self-depreciation (working on that one), less wasting time on things that don’t actually matter to me (ahem socials, among other pointless activities), and even—can you believe this one?—less gin. Yup. Been gin-free for 7 days and although I thought I would miss my nightly cocktail, I actually don’t.

The weird way habits get their claws in us. Here’s to a new year of more good ones!