The Big Fat Lie.

40s: not always fabulous. There, I said it. Now I can treat myself to a breakfast of pout on toast. Or make the best of a changing situation.

My 40s have been a total cakewalk--until this year. (Which would be the year I decided to start a blog called Fabulous, Never Better. $#¡t.) Until now, I didn't even know I was getting older. I looked the same as when I was 36, possibly better; I got married at 43, published at 45, and had more confidence and less crap in my head than ever. If this was getting older, I was in.

Then I turned 47. Lines appeared on my face for the first time in my formerly line-free life. That didn't bug me as much as the small but significant amount of weight I gained that took me into the next pants size, which would be O. Not zero--"O," for obsessive. My feelings of self-worth, self-esteem, self-blah blah blah are all tied up in these pounds. This leads to the snake dining on its own tail: I diet, feel virtuous, but am miserable as I love food; then I eat, gain weight, and feel sad, yet happy. Hours of boring, obsessive fun that keeps me from thinking about bigger issues.

Simply put: Women in their 40s start gaining weight due to metabolic slowdown. (Not my friend Christina, blogger of Fallen Princess, but she's got the Dorian Gray rotting-portrait-in-the-closet thing going on. Damn her.) That's just a fact, and not very fabulous news. Howevs, my fabulous friend Alice, who's in her 50s and in the best shape of her life, listened to my diet/no diet rant recently and said (wait for it, here's the kicker): "I can't turn every part of my life into work." 

I almost dropped my fried plantain over that one. She's right--between work, keeping the home from turning into Grey Gardens, relationships, exercising (for fitness, not to banish fatness), etc., do I need another project, i.e. judging every single thing I put in my mouth? <---sounds like hell to me.

Thus begins the experiment: striking a balance between relaxation and going to hell in an Apres Midi du Chien handbag. More on this soon.

Besos, beauties.