My New Favorite Swimsuit Company

I’ve written quite a bit about Karla Colletto – the fabulously expensive and fabulously flattering swimsuit that actually managed to make me feel less than disgusting on the beach last summer.   But notice that first “fabulously?”  The expense of a KC bathing suit is a bit daunting — upwards of $200 dollars to start.

So here I am with a new recommendation:  Shape FX. It is QUITE unlike me to buy a bathing suit online — I need to try on, try on, try on.  Check out the strategic qualities of it’s camoflage abilities:  does my stomach look enormous?  Does the skin above the leg line bulge?  Is my back fat under control?  But after reading about Shape FX in Rachel Ray’s magazine (my guilty pleasure – hey, if I can’t eat fish cooked with a pound of butter and a cup of cream at least I can read about it) I decided to take a chance.

See Shape FX is all about strategic dressing.  You take a little questionnaire online about your body, then they recommend clothing just for you.  I took the quiz, bought the bathing suit and all I can say is:

OMG.

Quite possibly, the most flattering bathing suit EVER.  And way way less expensive than Karla.

So there you have it.  My new (budget friendly) alternative to my first love, Karla Colletto.  I plan to try their push up, control pants too.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

Ageless Body? Yeah, right.

Long ago, I discovered the secret to buying (passably) flattering bathing suits: the worse you look the more you pay. (Hence, the Karla Coletto bazillion dollar(and worth every penny) bathing suit.)  I then learned the secret to feeling young and attractive: hang out with the septaugenarians.  I’ve bemoaned the new fahion-math: in Hollywood, size six is the new size twelve. I’ve questioned the new age-math (not new-age math, mind you, but new age-math) which tries to tell us that 40 is the new thirty, and 80 is the new sixty.  By that logic, I’m actually getting younger every year.

Still, nothing prepared me for my recent beach-side discovery:  post-forty, bodies age exponentially.

Think about it: what was your body like at 20?  Was it so different at 25?  At 30? Probably not. As a matter of fact,  I was actually in better shape at 32 than I was at 22.  At 32 I was working out, jogging, eating right.  At 22 I was living in Paris, smoking, drinking wine, and thought exercise was something I only had to do in America, and only then when some oversized PE teacher was forcing me.

Now think of your body at 38.  Then at forty.  Then at 42. (If you haven’t reached this milestone, don’t read on: you might not want to know what’s next).  Still the same body?  Not so much, huh?

Last year, I noticed that my knees were wrinkling. Knees!! What the hell can you do about that?  This year, my quads have joined in.  Mind you, I weigh less (thank you Weight Watchers) this year than I did last,  and the muscles are still under there: yoga and Nia, and weight training, and even ballroom dancing sees to that.  But my skin doesn’t care.  My skin is aging.  Fast.

So is the rest of me.  Today, I went to Tip Top Shoes to try to find stylish shoes that don’t bother my back or my bunion. There, I said it.  BUNION.  If that doesn’t say “your body is aging” well, what does? (By the way stylkish shoes adn bunion really don’t go together. I don’t care what Mephisto says.)

Then there’s the fact that I can no longer drink alcohol.  I was never much of a drinker.  Maybe a few glasses of wine once or twice a month.  But now?  ONE glass, and I’m out of commission for three days. Jeez.

It isn’t that I don’t want to get older (well, I don’t, but that’s not the point) The point is, why is it happening so fast?  I pretty much looked the same from the time I was 20 until I was thirty.  There were little changes – maybe my skin wasn’t quite as vibrant – but overall, the changes were just a difference – not a decline.

So all this leads me to one thing:  should I change the name of my blog?  Let’s face it, agelessbodytimelessmom.com is quite a mouthful, quite a thing to type in, and awfully hard to remember, from what I gather. (Does no one get the Deepak Chopra reference?  Anyone? Anyone?)

I have been working on a manuscript for a while now, it’s called: From Hip to Housewife in Two Kids Flat.  So I’m asking here — should I change my website’s name to FromHiptoHousewife.com?  FromHip2Housewife.com?  Or just keep it as is.  Because, let’s face it, despite my best attempts, I’m not exactly ageless here.  

Votes welcome.  Vote, please, and fast.  I’m not getting any younger.

NYC Moms Blog Post: My Daughter Thinks She’s Fat and It’s all my Fault

Swimsuit season is upon us.  And with it the onslaught of diet ads on tv, magazines with pics of celebs caught having actual cellulite, and me, bemoaning my post-partum, post-forty, past passing for anything but middle-aged body.

Though I am, if I am completely, intellectually honest, neither truly fat, or particularly unattractive, I have made a life (and something of a writing career) of comically dissecting my physical flaws.  I’m the self-appointed Queen of Bad Body Image, chronicling on line and in print my twenty year quest to lose the same ten pounds.  I’ve joked about the fact that my belly button seems to be frowning, that the only men who find me attractive are septuagenarians, that I’ve chosen to paint my daughter’s room the same lavender color as my newly acquired varicose veins.

Ha Ha.  Nudge nudge.  Wink Wink. Very funny.  Until this morning, when my daughter refused to eat breakfast because, she told me through her tears, the boys in her class had told her she was fat.

Want to read the rest of this post?  Click here to go to NYC Moms Blog. (and while you’re there, leave a comment, wouldja?)

Genes vs Jeans

They either make my butt look too big, or too broad. They accentuate my gut or give me muffin top.  They are jeans.  The bane of my existence.  My dream is to be able to look good in a white t-shirt, a pair of jeans, and some flip flops.  But it seems that my genes won’t let me look good in my jeans.

If any of you have been paying attention, you’ll know that for the past several months, I’ve been writing for 23andMe as one of their founding community members in the Pregnancy Community.  (And no, I’m not preggers.  I just have been – thus, I qualify.)  According to my genes, I am at a slightly elevated risk for obesity.  According to my genes, I will never look good in the aforementioned jeans, t-shirt and flip flops ensemble.  According to my jeans, my genes are correct.

I find it almost impossible to buy jeans.  If they’re “classic cut” they make my butt look like North Dakota – wide and flat.  If they’re low cut -  well, where do I begin?  How are you supposed to wear underwear with those low-cut jeans?  And if you’re not supposed to wear underwear (yuck!), then what are you supposed to do with your – ahem – furry bits?  Brazillian?  I don’t expect to rhumba any time soon.  Plus, I find it more than slightly offensive that men – with their hairy backs, fuzzy butts, and occasional ear hair, deem it “sexy” for a grown woman to be hairless “down there.”  Call me crazy, but that smacks of pedophilia to me.

Then there’s the question of how to keep those low-cut jeans from falling down.  Many’s the time I walked behind a teenage home-boy, wondering how he does it.  It truly is a miracle of fashion physics.  Their pants stay up, even with their waistbands way down.

SO I was already worried enough about my jeans, when suddenly my genes had to complicate things.

According to my genes, I am also at greater risk for developing diabetes.  Yet this doesn’t phase me.  Genes only slightly influence diabetes.  I figure that if I exercise and eat right, it won’t be a problem.  But obesity?  I’m a girl who watches each cookie I eat deposit itself as fat on my upper thighs.  I am a girl who almost always buys the size large.  I am the girl with back-muffin-top.  You know, at the bra line?  This obesity gene – is serious business. IT’S FREAKING ME OUT!

And because of that diabetes risk, I can even have a pint of chocolate chip mint to soothe my worried mind.

Darn you, jean-etics!

Leave Carrie Prejean Alone!

So Carrie Prejean, the controversial Miss California USA (not for long?) once posed for nude photos.  Is anyone out there surprised?  Let’s face it, these days, there are LOTS of girls sending nude photos of themselves out over the internet.  One of them is even being prosecuted for distribution of child pornography – for sending out photos of herself!

The real problem here is not posing topless, not being anti-gay, not even Carrie Prejean herself, but the fact that our daughters are being told – through beauty pageants like Miss USA, that pretty is all that matters.  You can be a homophobe, you can be borderline incapable of literate speech, you can be stupid enough to do something that has the potential to ruin your life’s dream…but if you’re pretty: here’s a crown, here’s some money, here you are being put out there as a role model to girls across the country.

Wanna read the complete post?  Check it out (and please leave a comment, if you do) at NYCMOMSBLOG.com

Put some clothes on!!!

This week, summer prematurely came to New York and with it, came a few discoveries. 

1. People on the East Side spend a lot of time on their knees, while people on the West Side spend a lot of time on their food.  How else to explain the plethora of tulips, hyacinths, and daffodils sprouting from every tree-trunk garden  from East 69th Street to East 91st Street, and the presence of Zabars, Citarella, H&H, Barney Greengrass and Fairway in roughly the same area on the West Side of town?

2. When your children scooter to school, it is unwise to wear your brand new bright yellow beaded Rafe flats.  You will get blisters.  You will bleed.  The yellow will turn orange.  And not in a good way.You don’t want orange shoes.

3. Whichever Ice Cream your child wants from the Ice Cream vendor whether it’s neon green shots, disgusting Sponge Bob ice with gumball eyes, or even the basic Ice Cream sandwich — said vendor will be out of it.

4. I am old.

No,  this isn’t about my upcoming birthday (Sunday – feel free to leave birthday greetings right here in the comment section.  No.  Really. Do.)  This isn’t about saggy knees, or brown spots, or elbows that look as if they’ve been crumpled up in the back of a drawer for a few decades.  No, I know I am old because I am consistently horrified by what “young girls” are wearing.

Yes, it seems I have jumped right from young mom in trendy threads, to disapproving Grandma in hip-high underwear without stopping at middle-aged woman still trying to be relevant.

But seriously.

Is there some rule that if you are female and possessing of a bustline you must display it so prominently that one might think your are at a State Fair, vying for the blue ribbon in Breast Augmentation?

Weight Watchers Weigh In Update #1

Weight Watchers.

The two most terrifying words in the English language.  (Though I suppose that “Compassionate Conservative” and “Hairy Back” might be contenders.)

And yet here I am, once again, doing the WW.  Counting the points, weighing the portions,trying to decide if a deck of cards (the proper size of a serving a meat) is the same size as the giant hunk of leg-o-lamb I’ve just plunked on my plate. (that would be NO.)

Full disclosure:  a publicist from WW gave me three months of Weight Watchers for free.  I figured that if I can’t follow the program and lose the weight when I don’t even have to pay for it….Well, then I might as well  just accept that “trying on bathing suits” will forever remain the four scariest words in the English language.

Today was my second weigh-in.  Week two.  Week one, I lost 1.4 pounds.  Not bad.  Not great, but not bad.  So week two, I decided to be extra careful: I weighed everything.  I wrote everything down.  And you know what?  I stayed the same.  EXACTLY the same.

It’s better than a gain, I know.  But still.  And this was a week where I skied, worked out with a trainer, took yoga, took a dance class, took a ballroom dancing lesson AND dieted. What else am I supposed to do?  Cut off my left arm from the elbow down and use it to beat the pounds off of me?

It was also a week where I went out to breakfast with a friend.  Here’s what I had: one poached egg (2 points) and one piece of dry whole wheat toast (2 points).  Here’s what she had: a three egg (one yolk only) mozzarella and tomato omelette , french fries, and two pieces of whole wheat toast slattered in butter.

Now, here’s what she looks like: five foot four, one hundred and ten pounds, size four or six.

And here’s what I look like: five foot seven, NOWHERE NEAR one hundred and ten, or even one hundred and twenty, and lets face it, it’s been 20 years since I’ve seen 130 pounds.  Size eight or ten.

Sometimes, life just isn’t fair, is it?

Straight after my weigh-in, I went to Loehmann’s to  – TRY ON BATHING SUITS.  I figured, hey, I’m already depressed about my body, why not go all out and make myself downright dismal???

I had already been to the world famous Town Shop last week, trying on Karla Coletto suits, and that hadn’t gone well.  I have sung the praises of her bathing suits before, but this time around.  Well, let’s just say it didn’t go as well.  The bathing suits are still beautiful.  Still fabulously designed.  I will admit, I look better in a Karla Coletto bathing suit than I have a right to. BUT (and it’s a big but – not to be confused with my big butt), this year, the suits were see-through.  I’m pretty sure it wasn’t intentional – but they were showing a whole lot more than I feel comfortable showing.  (Or that you’d feel comfortable seeing, believe me.) For $200 and up, I expect a fabric that at least doesn’t show my (theoretical) tan lines through my suit. Or, let’s be frank, the depth of my bikini wax. So no Karla Coletto for me this year.  I’m looking on the bright side: this way, I won’t be tempted to spend $200 plus on a bathing suit!

ANYWAY – so there I was in Loehmann’s, and  as I entered the (communal) dressing room, I see my naturally (and preternaturally) thin friend, J.  (And as you read, remember, she’s a FRIEND) She takes one look at my armful of bathing suits (size 8’s, I might add – it’s not like I was kidding myself) and says “Are you going to fit into those?”

Youch.

I suppose the proper response would have been: “Are you going incredibly mean, incredibly unfeeling, or just a bitch?”  Or maybe “Are you going to go through puberty ever?  And get breasts?”  But no, all I said was:  “Well, I’m on Weight Watchers.”

All I can say is, it better work.

So check in every Wednesday for a Weight Watchers update. I let you know if I’m up or down, and I’ll tell you what’s working and what’s not.  Hey, maybe it’ll keep me honest, and finally, finally, get me to lose those ten pounds I’ve been struggling with for the past twenty years!

If you have any great Weight Watchers knowledge to impart – well, let me know.  Evidently, I need all the help I can get.

Size Matters

Lately, my eight daughter has been obsessed with her size.  She has been weighing herself constantly – with her clothes on, without her clothes on, before a meal, after a meal.  She’s been reporting her weight to the tenth of a pound several times a day.  “I weigh 56.2!”  “Now it says 54.9!”  It’s like she’s calibrating the single most important thing in her life.

Needless to say, I’ve been feeling guilty about this.  Evidently, I have transferred my own obsession with my weight to my daughter, who now faces a bleak future of strategic dressing, incessant dieting, and warped body image.  Sign me up for the Mom of the Year award!!

But then yesterday, I asked her (with feigned non-chalance — all those acting classes I took in High School were not in vain!)  why she cared so much about her weight.

“I wanna get to sixty!” was her answer.

She’s hoping to get bigger — as any shortest-in-the-grade kid would — not smaller.

So I haven’t (yet?) transferred all of my issues to her.  She’s still the same little girl who, at three years old, stared at herself in the the mirror and told me she was just checking to see how beautiful she was.

Mother of the year award…I’m ready for you!

Lessons Learned from a Really Bad Cold

If any of you checks in regularly, you may have noticed that I haven’t posted in a while.  I’d love to tell you that it’s because I’ve been busy fending off offers for my recently completed manuscript.  But the only offers I’ve had lately are for subscriptions to More magazine — you know, the one for “mature” women.  I wish I could tell you that I’ve been too busy with a life injected with new vigor by the recent election of Barack Obama.  But the only thing I’ve even considered injecting is my forehead, with Botox, since the bridge of my nose looks as if someone etched the number eleven into it with a very deep chisel.

No the reason for my dereliction of duty is this: I have been sick in bed with a cold of plague-like proportions.  The sore throat, the fever, the chills, the sneezing and coughing….I could have starred in my own Vicks commercial.

But has my suffering been in vain?  Why of course not!

Here’s what I learned in my cold-induced stupor:

1. The quickest way to lose three pounds is to be so unenergetic as to not have the will to eat. Keep this in mind before your next big event:  get a horrible, nasty cold the week before and you’ll look fabu come party time.

Scaling too High

If you gain five pounds, but you don’t have a scale to step on…does it really make you fat?

I’ve been avoiding the scale lately, because I don’t need to weigh myself to know that I have gained weight, again, this summer.   But instead of being upset about it, I’m going to find reasons to be glad. Yes glad.  Weight gain is my friend.

1. Catherine Deneuve said (and I paraphrase, for you sticklers out there) that after forty, a woman has to decide between her body and her face. Evidently, I’ve chosen my face.  Wait, did I have a choice of faces?  I want Angelina Jolie’s.

2. I don’t have to worry about people accusing me of having a tummy tuck.  No tuck.  Just tummy.

3. As a Southern friend once said “the bigger the cushion the better the pushin’”  And I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean pushing your stalled car.

4.  If I fall down, there’s something to cushion my fall.

5. If I can’t find a ruler, I can always pinch an inch.  But that’s just my arms, for my stomach, we’re talking yardstick.

6. I really get use out of the stretch in my stretch jeans.

7. When I look straight down, I don’t have to be confronted by the fact that I haven’t had a pedicure in over a month because I can’t see my toes anyway.

8.  I burn more calories when I exercise, because I weight more, yet I’m still using the treadmill at the same speed, and whatever calculation those machines use…it says I’m burning more.

9. I’m going to win a prize.  Because anyone who can come up with nine good things about weight gain?  Well, she deserves a prize for sure.

10.  It’ll give my an excuse to get VelaShape treatments — which I must try, and I’m sure they’ll work.  And I’ll be thin, and lose the extra five (please let it only be five) so I can get back to trying to lose the same ten pounds I’ve been trying to get rid of for twenty years.

Hey – can my prize be vela-shape?  Or magical fat reducing tonic?  Or — oh, this’ll be good.  A little WILLPOWER!!!