Would Younger Me Be Horrified by Older Me?

My friend Shanell has an Instagram account called Shanells Fit Journey, where she shares her experience discovering weightlifting and figuring out health in midlife. Yesterday she posted about how different the things we care about now are from the things we thought were important in our 20s and 30s. I immediately thought about myself at 25. All I cared about was snowboarding every day and going to the bar every night. I’m not even remotely exaggerating.

I actually worked nights so I could snowboard all day, and I rarely missed a day on the hill. Back then, it was a flex to tell people how many days you had on your pass, and you better believe I was keeping track. If getting your pass depended on your job, you did whatever job you needed to do just to secure it. I worked nights because it meant I could snowboard all day, then I would go out after work to the bar, get up the next morning and do it all over again. Pretty much the typical life of a snowboard bum. I had an absolutely raging case of FOMO before FOMO was even a recognizable thing. If everyone else was going out, I was going out. The thought that I might miss something was simply not an option.

Fast-forward 30 years and you know what I was ridiculously excited about this morning? I slept for eight hours and 40 minutes last night. I woke up, looked at my Oura ring and was stoked. I had gotten tons of REM and, according to Oura, almost three hours of deep sleep. At 55, a really good night of sleep makes me ridiculously happy. I felt amazing when I woke up this morning and could not have been more ready to take on the day.

I recently decided to go back to eating Paleo. I know that I feel better when I eat this way. When I was the healthiest I had been in years, back in my mid-40s, I ate a pretty strict Paleo diet for a long time. It wasn't the only thing I changed, but it was a huge part of how I got my health back.

Before that, my health had gotten pretty bad. I was significantly overweight, or obese as my primary care doctor liked to call me. Is there anything more discouraging than having your doctor tell you you're obese? I know it's a medical term, but I swear there has to be a better way to have that conversation with someone. We want our doctors to see us in our best light. Hell, we even lie to them about things they actually need to know, like how much alcohol we drink or how stressed we really are, because we want them to think we're doing great even when we know we're not. I mean, we ARE sitting in the doctor's office after all.

That was when I started making some pretty significant changes. I went on a strict autoimmune Paleo diet, or AIP, started meditating for the first time in my life, quit drinking alcohol and quit occasionally smoking pot. I lost about 65 pounds in three or four months, but the changes in my health went way beyond the number on the scale. Over time, my autoimmune markers went away and my thyroid eventually stabilized enough that I was able to stop taking thyroid medication, which, if you know anything about thyroid health, doesn't happen all that often.

That experience completely changed the way I think about food. I believe wholeheartedly that food is one of the most powerful forms of medicine we have, but I also think you have to figure out what actually works for your own body. I have enough history with Paleo to know that I feel better when I eat this way. My inflammation is better, my energy is better and I just feel better in my body.

Years ago I read Eat Right 4 Your Type, which claims that people with Type O blood do better eating more meat, vegetables and fruit and fewer grains, legumes and dairy. I'm O positive, and the idea always stuck with me because it lined up pretty closely with the way I already knew I felt best eating. The science behind eating specifically for your blood type hasn't really held up, so I can't tell you without a doubt that being O positive has anything to do with why Paleo works so well for me. What I do know is that I've been living in this body for 55 years, and by now I have a pretty good idea of what makes it feel good and what doesn't. Screw the science.

Last night my husband made an amazing Paleo dinner from a recipe my friend Lily gave us with sweet potatoes, grass-fed ground beef, a bunch of spices, homemade pico de gallo, avocado, fresh lime and cilantro crema. It was pretty much the best thing ever. I didn't drink any tequila, which is actually saying something in our house. My husband is a tequila rep, so it's pretty unusual for me to say no to a glass of exceptionally good tequila, but I did. I haven't smoked pot in forever, and I decided to stop drinking water after 8:00 because my husband had read something about it on Instagram. The claim was that drinking water later at night keeps your body in a low-grade state of fight or flight because your kidneys are working while you're sleeping. I couldn't find any reliable evidence that that's actually true, but drinking less before bed does mean you're less likely to wake up to pee, so I figured it couldn't hurt to try it.

I made sure our bedroom was cool, took all of my devices out of the room and never turned on the TV. There is research looking at whether EMFs and Wi-Fi signals can affect sleep, and while the data is still emerging, I'm interested enough to pay attention to it. There is much better evidence that what we're actually doing on our phones can interfere with sleep. Scrolling, notifications and the constant anticipation of what we're going to see next keep our brains engaged through the same reward pathways that involve dopamine. I'm certainly capable of telling myself I'm going to look at one thing and realizing 45 minutes later that I'm still scrolling, so taking my phone out of the bedroom solves that problem too. Instead, I picked up the book I'm reading and went to bed at 9:30.

My alarm went off at 7:00 this morning. Since closing my business, I changed my Monday-through-Friday alarm from 6:00 to 7:00. Winning! I woke up after eight hours and 40 minutes of sleep feeling ridiculously good and completely ready to take on the day. Seriously, this is what makes me happy now.

Of course the things that are important to us at 55 are different from what mattered at 25. That's not exactly rocket science. What I find fascinating is just how much those priorities change and how important they felt at the time. At 25, I wanted to snowboard every single day and never miss a night out. At 55, I want to sleep really well, feel strong, eat food that makes me feel good and wake up excited about how I feel instead of trying to remember how many shots I did the night before and wondering why my feet hurt so much. Oh yeah, because I danced for four hours in heels at Garton's on a floor that literally bounced.

I still love being on the mountain, but these days I would much rather set up my splitboard and skin uphill than try to snowboard every day. If you had told 25-year-old me that someday I would voluntarily slide up a mountain when there was a perfectly good chairlift sitting right there, I would have thought you were insane. Now I love it. It's phenomenal exercise, I can get my heart rate exactly where I want it, I'm outside, I'm getting stronger and I can do it without being around a ton of people. Because people are seriously overrated.

I used to think staying home meant I was missing something. Now I know exactly what I'm missing. A loud bar, too many shots of tequila, sore feet and a shitty night's sleep. I'm good. Give me good food, quality time with my awesome husband, my version of ideal sleep hygiene and big plans to do something outside the next day and I am happy Kirsten.

I don't think any of this means I've figured out the right way to live. I definitely haven't become some wildly disciplined person who always makes the healthy choice. I still love tequila, and every once in a while I can absolutely be talked into a fun night out. I just don't have FOMO about it anymore. My definition of fun has definitely changed. So has my definition of feeling good.

I'm pretty sure 25-year-old me would think this version of my life sounds incredibly boring. She would also probably be horrified that I voluntarily go to bed at 9:30, prioritize leafy greens, get excited about my deep sleep numbers and slide uphill instead of taking the chairlift. Living younger Kirsten's life was a blast. But older Kirsten is content and happy. And isn't that what most of us are looking for anyway?