Hate Your Aging Body? Then Read This

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At 18, about to head off to college, I came close to dying from anorexia. I was terrified of adult womanhood; starving myself was both a cry for help and a misguided attempt to achieve a distorted image of female perfection.

Once on campus, I joined a self-help group, regained 35 pounds, and recovered fully. Lemons turned into lemonade, as the experience landed my first article, “Starving for Perfection," in Seventeen Magazine, and jump-started my career as a writer.

Forty years later, I’m 50 pounds heavier; having birthed and nursed three kids, I appreciate my imperfect body even more. However, there are times when I look in the mirror and think viciously: that face and body are DISGUSTING. That same beautiful being that attracted wonderful men to me, grew my three children, and delivered a life of walking, swimming, biking and yoga-ing.

I hate feeling this way.

I don’t want to detest my body.

I’m not alone.

The US Gender and Body Image study recruited 1,849 women 50 and above. The study showed that eating disorders in older women are increasing. About 13 percent of us have some form of core current ED symptom, including anorexia, bulimia and binge eating. Many, many more suffer with my symptom — distorted, negative body image, also called body dysmorphia.

Why do so many of us still despise our bodies? We go on diets. Take weight loss meds. Pay exorbitant fees for plastic surgery that arguably does not make us look younger or better. We squeeze into Spanx. We exercise like addicts. Most of us started this fun house of distorted mirrors when we were teenagers.

Why haven’t we stopped?

“We don’t grow out of eating disorders,” explains Dr. Cynthia M. Bulik, author of Midlife Eating Disorders, and the Distinguished Professor of Eating Disorders and Founding Director of the Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “In fact, widespread ageism makes it even harder for older women to like the bodies and faces we see in the mirror, and on our friends. Today, there is intense, widespread pressure in every ad we see, every Instagram post, every reality TV show. The message is simple: women are not acceptable, not successful, not lovable unless we look at least a decade younger than we are.”

No wonder so many older women say they appreciate feeling invisible after 50. It’s far better than hating your reflection. It's not just our mental health and happiness at stake. Disordered, unhealthy eating can greatly damage older women’s health. One study showed that 73 percent of women over 50 with eating disorders suffer from osteoporosis, leading to increased risk of broken bones and decreased mobility. Brain dysfunction and gastric complications are other common eating disorder side effects. Dysfunctional eating takes its toll on our bodies, and only about 50 percent of women with serious eating disorders recover.

I’m sure you’re all too familiar with the vexations I’m describing. More importantly, what are the solutions?

First, have a heart-to-heart with yourself. I recommend doing this naked in front of a mirror in a quiet, private moment. Do you want to live the rest of your life loathing your own skin? Is this how you want to go out? Not grasping your own beauty? How you and I view our bodies is a daily, hourly choice that we control.

Next, focus on what we can change. If you have bulimia, binge eating or anorexia, find an expert who can help — start with Overeaters Anonymous or the National Eating Disorders Association, both of which offer free support.

If you are more like me, with stubborn, I hate my body dysmorphia, pick one aspect of your aging appearance (only one!). Fix that one thing. I have a beautiful friend who happens to abhor how she looks in a bathing suit, so she swims naked. For me, it was the age spots on my face and hands from years of tanning.

I put aside some dough, went to see a cosmetic dermatologist, and invested in two noninvasive treatments to diminish the spots. I’ve changed my bad habits, scrupulously wear sunscreen, and sleep with Aquaphor and cotton gloves. Every time I look at my hands now, I smile to myself.

List five things you actually like about your body. Your pretty toes? The way your smile lights up your face? The silver streaks in your hair? Assess yourself with kindness. See the beauty that is there. Reprogram your brain to spotlight these attributes every single time you get dressed to take on the world, your grandchildren, or your garden.

But to succeed, we have to fight the intensely negative social and media pressure we’ve all been subjected to since girlhood. We must insist on seeing ourselves as beautiful.

Next, turn to other women for inspiration. A gift of aging is to assess, yet again, how our worth as women does not rest on the number of wrinkles or the size of our butts.

Look to older celebrities and leaders for validation: Gloria Steinem (91), Rita Moreno (93), Oprah Winfrey (71), Nancy Pelosi (85), Diana Ross (81), Paulina Porizkova (60). Iman (69), Jane Fonda (87), and Bo Derek (68). More and more often, powerful women stay in the spotlight as they age. Take strength from them.

Think about your mother, your grandmother, or that dazzling older woman you passed in the grocery store. Women everywhere are aging magnificently and naturally; we just have to see them, and ourselves, through a more appreciative lens.

I recently installed a Ring camera inside my home, based on advice from my adult children who were concerned that I live alone. Mostly what the camera captures is me, naked, making coffee in the kitchen. Perhaps some of my body-hating vitriol has come from the resulting videos I’ve watched lately of my own backside.

So today, as I went to make my coffee in the buff, I gave the camera the finger. I’m going out to enjoy my life in my flawed but exquisite aging body.

 
What do you love most about YOUR aging body? Let us know in the comments below.