Last week, on Saint Patrick’s Day, Steven turned 42. Andrea passed that milestone in early December. Being fans of the late Douglas Adams, we consider the number 42 monumentally important. For those who have not read the Hitchhiker’s Guide, 42 is the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything. Most of the book builds to this punch line. If you haven’t read it, now is an excellent time to start hating us.
We decided that the best way to celebrate this landmark was hop a plane to Maui. We assumed there would be no better place to contemplate the meaning and consequences of getting older than on a beach facing an open ocean. We were right, but not for the reasons we assumed. We came in search of grand metaphors involving waves gradually reducing lava fields to pristine, black sand. We hoped to find some special meaning in the humpback whales jumping and playing offshore in the endless blue of the Pacific. It turned out that best metaphors were marooned on shore among the odd mishmash of families with children, geriatric retirees, college kids on spring break and local surfers working odd jobs to earn just enough money to stay perpetually high. There are an infinite number of ways we can choose to age. Ka’anapali beach resort is a place where all of the most common choices are on display like criminals in police lineup.
We decided that the best way to celebrate this landmark was hop a plane to Maui. We assumed there would be no better place to contemplate the meaning and consequences of getting older than on a beach facing an open ocean. We were right, but not for the reasons we assumed. We came in search of grand metaphors involving waves gradually reducing lava fields to pristine, black sand. We hoped to find some special meaning in the humpback whales jumping and playing offshore in the endless blue of the Pacific. It turned out that best metaphors were marooned on shore among the odd mishmash of families with children, geriatric retirees, college kids on spring break and local surfers working odd jobs to earn just enough money to stay perpetually high. There are an infinite number of ways we can choose to age. Ka’anapali beach resort is a place where all of the most common choices are on display like criminals in police lineup.
We decided that the best way to celebrate this landmark was hop a plane to Maui. We assumed there would be no better place to contemplate the meaning and consequences of getting older than on a beach facing an open ocean. We were right, but not for the reasons we assumed. We came in search of grand metaphors involving waves gradually reducing lava fields to pristine, black sand. We hoped to find some special meaning in the humpback whales jumping and playing offshore in the endless blue of the Pacific. It turned out that best metaphors were marooned on shore among the odd mishmash of families with children, geriatric retirees, college kids on spring break and local surfers working odd jobs to earn just enough money to stay perpetually high. There are an infinite number of ways we can choose to age. Ka’anapali beach resort is a place where all of the most common choices are on display like criminals in police lineup.
Method One: Stretch, suck, inject and/or replace parts until your body composition to roughly the aesthetic and chemical equivalent of the 1976 Stretch Armstrong Action Figure from Kenner. Anyone who owned the original Stretch Armstrong will tell you that his insides weren’t pretty. But he retained his figure in a way Barbie could only dream of. [Editor’s Note: this is okay only because you’ve already warned people you’re old.]
Maui was not our first encounter with the nip and tuck cartel. A few years ago, Andrea was soaking in the hot tub at an Arizona spa. She was surround by ladies 20 years her senior who were talking about when a woman should have her first facelift. Not IF, when. And since all of these women were post-lift, the entire conversation was most likely intended as intervention for Andrea who, in the group’s opinion, had mistakenly let her date slip by. Andrea was not yet 40 and the passive aggressive consensus was clearly that she was already pruning up like Yoda.
Method Two: Decay with the steadfast regularity of a radioactive element. After the age of 20, the Average American gains around a pound per year (US News). This is not that big of a deal at age 25. By age 40 it means that your body keeps moving long after you’ve settled into your beach chair. The combination of poor diet and little exercise affects everything from longevity to quality of life, but not everyone fights against it. We have an old friend who likes to rub his Dom Deluise belly and say, “I’m not dieting. I spent a lot of money on this.”
Method Three: Denial. We used to think that most people know what to eat and how to exercise but simply choose to ignore that knowledge. Our trip to Maui dramatically altered our thinking. The activity that prompted this reevaluation was sport fishing. For four hours, we dragged hooks disguised as rubber squid behind a boat through the channel between Maui and Lana’i. We caught nothing, which left us with plenty of time to talk.
The first mate was a chubby kid in his late-twenties. He was by no means obese, but his trajectory was definitely in that direction. He brought up the fact that he was trying to lose weight in spite of the fact that we never mentioned DYC. His entire plan consisted of cutting back on red meat and dietary fats such as olive oil and coconut. We did what any self-respecting diet blogger would do. We told him that he had it backwards. Rather than limit meat and fat, he needed to eliminate sugar and cut way back on the simple carbs. His answer was astonishing: “No way I can give up carbs. I’m a Fruity Pebbles guy. I can’t start my day without Fruity Pebbles.
Method One: Stretch, suck, inject and/or replace parts until your body composition to roughly the aesthetic and chemical equivalent of the 1976 Stretch Armstrong Action Figure from Kenner. Anyone who owned the original Stretch Armstrong will tell you that his insides weren’t pretty. But he retained his figure in a way Barbie could only dream of. [Editor’s Note: this is okay only because you’ve already warned people you’re old.]
Maui was not our first encounter with the nip and tuck cartel. A few years ago, Andrea was soaking in the hot tub at an Arizona spa. She was surround by ladies 20 years her senior who were talking about when a woman should have her first facelift. Not IF, when. And since all of these women were post-lift, the entire conversation was most likely intended as intervention for Andrea who, in the group’s opinion, had mistakenly let her date slip by. Andrea was not yet 40 and the passive aggressive consensus was clearly that she was already pruning up like Yoda.
Method Two: Decay with the steadfast regularity of a radioactive element. After the age of 20, the Average American gains around a pound per year (US News). This is not that big of a deal at age 25. By age 40 it means that your body keeps moving long after you’ve settled into your beach chair. The combination of poor diet and little exercise affects everything from longevity to quality of life, but not everyone fights against it. We have an old friend who likes to rub his Dom Deluise belly and say, “I’m not dieting. I spent a lot of money on this.”
Method Three: Denial. We used to think that most people know what to eat and how to exercise but simply choose to ignore that knowledge. Our trip to Maui dramatically altered our thinking. The activity that prompted this reevaluation was sport fishing. For four hours, we dragged hooks disguised as rubber squid behind a boat through the channel between Maui and Lana’i. We caught nothing, which left us with plenty of time to talk.
The first mate was a chubby kid in his late-twenties. He was by no means obese, but his trajectory was definitely in that direction. He brought up the fact that he was trying to lose weight in spite of the fact that we never mentioned DYC. His entire plan consisted of cutting back on red meat and dietary fats such as olive oil and coconut. We did what any self-respecting diet blogger would do. We told him that he had it backwards. Rather than limit meat and fat, he needed to eliminate sugar and cut way back on the simple carbs. His answer was astonishing: “No way I can give up carbs. I’m a Fruity Pebbles guy. I can’t start my day without Fruity Pebbles.
Fact: Fruity Pebbles are virtually fat free. Less than 5% of the calories come from fat. If you believe that this makes them healthy you are seriously deluding yourself.
Look at it this way: an entirely sedentary lifestyle would reduce your risk of slipping and falling by 100%. By this one tiny measurement, a sedentary lifestyle is the healthiest choice imaginable. Only when you read descriptions of someone being surgically unglued from their couch do you realize there are other factors.
We don’t believe that our first mate really thought Fruity Pebbles were a healthy breakfast. But he’d clearly convinced himself that they were somehow less bad than alternatives like high-cholesterol eggs. Every argument he made came back to the importance of lowering his fat intake. When calories were mentioned, he changed the subject. It was classic proof texting, coming up with an argument to justify a decision already made. Our first mate was going to keep his Fruity Pebbles, so all of his arguments were constructed to support that principle.
We all occasional fall prey this type of faulty logic, but our first mate’s case is by all measurements extreme. He was doing the equivalent of trying to justify smoking a carton of menthols a day by arguing that he’s only doing it to protect children: by smoking a carton a day, he’s reduces the number of cigarettes in the marketplace that might otherwise find their way into the hands of vulnerable youngsters.
Method Four: Skinny fat. This is a term that didn’t even exist when we were growing up. The idea that you could be thin but still carry all of the health markers of obesity is a relatively new realization. From our unscientific observations of vacationers in skimpy beachwear on Kaanapali beach, skinny fat accounts for the vast majority of people on the lower end of the BMI scale.
The problem we see with skinny fat is that, aside from not being healthy, it isn’t much fun to maintain. The calorie restriction required is, for most people, extreme. There is little room for cheating. There is little room for empty calories like alcohol, which makes skinny fat incompatible with DYC. Most importantly, if you are ever required to hang off the edge of a building during a crisis—this comes up all the time in action films so we assume it must occasionally happen in real life—you aren’t going to last very long. In our minds, it is best to be prepared just in case.
Method Five: Exercise and eat well to feel young even if you no longer look so young. There were a handful of people on the beach who could grace the cover of Shape or Men’s Health magazine. This never surprises us with 22-year-olds, but some of these people were in their 40s and 50s. We’re fit for 42, but we lack the discipline required to maintain the fitness model physique. The margin of error for the fitness model is even narrower than for the skinny fat. We never asked any of these folk for their exercise or diet regimen, but we can say definitively that we never saw a single one of them eating nachos or drinking a sickly sweet happy hour cocktail.
The problem with our list is that it ignores the fact that people often choose a combination of approaches to aging. Some people exercise and eat well while injecting themselves full of botulism. Other people have figured out that bariatric surgery allows them to move from obese to skinny fat without making any substantive lifestyle changes.
We all occasional fall prey this type of faulty logic, but our first mate’s case is by all measurements extreme. He was doing the equivalent of trying to justify smoking a carton of menthols a day by arguing that he’s only doing it to protect children: by smoking a carton a day, he’s reduces the number of cigarettes in the marketplace that might otherwise find their way into the hands of vulnerable youngsters.
Method Four: Skinny fat. This is a term that didn’t even exist when we were growing up. The idea that you could be thin but still carry all of the health markers of obesity is a relatively new realization. From our unscientific observations of vacationers in skimpy beachwear on Kaanapali beach, skinny fat accounts for the vast majority of people on the lower end of the BMI scale.
The problem we see with skinny fat is that, aside from not being healthy, it isn’t much fun to maintain. The calorie restriction required is, for most people, extreme. There is little room for cheating. There is little room for empty calories like alcohol, which makes skinny fat incompatible with DYC. Most importantly, if you are ever required to hang off the edge of a building during a crisis—this comes up all the time in action films so we assume it must occasionally happen in real life—you aren’t going to last very long. In our minds, it is best to be prepared just in case.
Method Five: Exercise and eat well to feel young even if you no longer look so young. There were a handful of people on the beach who could grace the cover of Shape or Men’s Health magazine. This never surprises us with 22-year-olds, but some of these people were in their 40s and 50s. We’re fit for 42, but we lack the discipline required to maintain the fitness model physique. The margin of error for the fitness model is even narrower than for the skinny fat. We never asked any of these folk for their exercise or diet regimen, but we can say definitively that we never saw a single one of them eating nachos or drinking a sickly sweet happy hour cocktail.
The problem with our list is that it ignores the fact that people often choose a combination of approaches to aging. Some people exercise and eat well while injecting themselves full of botulism. Other people have figured out that bariatric surgery allows them to move from obese to skinny fat without making any substantive lifestyle changes.
Fact: We always assumed that bariatric surgery was the last bastion of hope for the terminally obese, the kind of people who make the local news because they cannot fit into an ambulance and are instead rushed to the hospital on a towtruck. Based on the photographs chosen for a new billboard campaign in California, this is no longer the case. The models pictured in the “Before” photographs are actually smaller than the folks Weight Watchers uses for their ads. There’s no other conclusion to draw: Chinese foot binding for the digestive track is now a mainstream alternative to eating well and exercising.
Within the confines of our genetic makeup we all make constant choices about how to live that in turn affect our shape and size. More importantly, these choices will affect our overall health and quality of life. Not making a choice is still a choice. Not making a choice is typically a choice to eat poorly and exercise very little. We don’t believe that everyone should or even can look like fitness models. There’s a broad range of healthy between “ripped” and “shaped like a Fruity Pebble.” In the end, we all have to decide where on this bell curve we want to fall. Or to put it into terms only other old people will understand: Gilligan or Skipper. The choice is yours.
We went to Hawaii with the knowledge that the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything is 42. We are no closer to finding the question.
We went to Hawaii with the knowledge that the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything is 42. We are no closer to finding the question.
