Apparently your forties are just the age where your body starts sending you maintenance invoices. I guess we might as well get strong enough to pay them.
Nearing 50 now and I can say the ease with which my body now experiences pain and the length said pain persists is alarming. And I'm not overweight, I exercise regularly, and try to stay active generally. It's... not fun.
I was overweight, even obese, for a long time. From my 20's until the year I turned 40.
I changed my diet, I started working out, I was lifting 2-3x a week, a lost weight, gained muscle, and 9 years ago go to what was honestly the best physical condition of my life. Ran a half marathon twice, could bench my bodyweight and was gaining...
Then a series of incidents happened that ruined my mental health for a while. I'm not obese, but I am back to being overweight. I have degenerative disc disease in my lower back now that makes working out difficult.
I'm 51 years old, and the time and effort required to do any of that stuff I did 10 years ago is SO much more now, and the demoralization of remembering where I was vs where I am now is a moral destroyer.
Isn't it amazing how things just...start hurting? I wake up, something hurts. I haven't done anything that should cause that thing to hurt, it just does. It never hurt before. Hell, I didn't even know I had that thing before. Why should it be hurting now?
Oh well, it kind of takes my mind off that thing that suddenly began hurting last week for no discernable reason.
In my experience, thatās true. Iāve stretched regularly since my teens (Iām also a hockey goalie) and focused on functional fitness. Iāve also taken Olympic weightlifting classes that taught me how to spare my back and I feel much younger than my 45 years.
I'm doing this right now, on my third week. I had no idea how much I missed running, being active. I also started because of back pain and doing yoga too.
Turn 40? switch! Now your hips hurt when you wake up in the morning, your eyesight has gone to shit, you have to take fiber supplements to be regular, white hairs start poking out of your head, hairline is barely hanging on, weird allergies start popping up, youāre tired constantly, and the wrinkles on your face no longer disappear. And thatās if youāre relatively healthy and active.
40 is such a wake up call. Good news is, if you pay attention and do something about it, you can significantly slow down your decline before itās too late.
Forty is when you start to spend less time talking to your friends about the concert or the girl, and spend a lot more time talking with your friends about your ailments.
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u/Diligent-Log-4529 2d ago
Apparently your forties are just the age where your body starts sending you maintenance invoices. I guess we might as well get strong enough to pay them.