Julie Smith

I sweat, therefore I am.

My Grandmother Holland always said, “Mules sweat, men perspire and women glow.” Boy, do I glow. Like a furnace in August.

I sweat when I’m nervous, when I fib and when I reach for a paper clip. I sweat when I sleep, when I vacuum and after I eat. There’s basically no activity that doesn’t make me lather up like the loser in a ten-horse race.

I don’t mind sweating when I exercise. It’s proof that my body is working as God intended. I walk 50 to 60 miles per week and lift weights on the regular. One might think that with all that effort, I’d weigh, say, 97 pounds and be able to drink hot fudge as a beverage, but one would be wrong.

When my beloved husband, Widdle Baby, and I watch TV, he’s huddled under a blanket with a portable heater aimed at his recliner, and I’m half-nude on the sofa, eating ice and gasping for air. Is this normal?

My resting heart rate is 84 beats per minute. and that’s on a good day. It’s been as high as 100 bpm. A doctor once said I have a high metabolism, to which I replied, “Tell that to my thighs.”

Menopause is but a faint memory, so I can’t blame the heat on hormones, but something’s got to give. Last week, I stepped out of a warm bath and made myself a nice cup of hot tea. It was like I’d swallowed the sun. Heat radiated from every pore—an internal hotness that made me want to crawl into the freezer and close the door behind me.

Another saying—this one from my mother—has also turned out to be true: “Gravity won’t be denied.” Middle-aged spread isn’t just a quip, and muffin top is real.

My mom had a great figure for a woman with four kids, but at around 45, her Playtex 18-Hour Girdle started working overtime.

I can still see her bitterly weighing out five ounces of baked chicken breast on her little Weight Watchers scale. That, green olives, black coffee and Ayd’s weight loss candies comprised her daily diet for roughly ten years…and believe me, they were rough years.