my first job out of college as 22 year-old was as a part-time associate at moca. the museum was located in a centuries-old, school building, which was grandfathered in past the current nyc building codes. there was no elevator so staff and visitors had to schlep up four flights of steep stairs to reach our galleries. one morning, my co-worker, who was in her 30s and had been working at moca since her undergraduate days, came into the office panting.
she looked over at me and half-jokingly said, “ever since i hit 25, those stairs are impossible for me. my knees crackle and i have to stop to catch my breath.”
of course, i didn’t believe her, though she’s not the type to exaggerate. still, here was a thin woman in her 30s who led an active lifestyle and ate healthily, which if you worked in chinatown like we did, was a miracle unto itself. how could someone so young be so worse for wear? fast forward three years later to me resting in the stairwell and rubbing my knees, as a throng of schoolchildren run by energetically as if they downed coffee and redbull for breakfast. ah, that’s what she meant…
it’s no secret that our bodies start to breakdown from the moment we’re born. ok – maybe not that extreme, but according to this dude, male bodies stop growing around 18-20:
and once it stops, there’s nowhere to go but down. how about muscle? according to forbes, we lose five to seven pounds of muscle tissue each decade of our adult lives. that’s like, an olsen sister every ten years of our lives! i can’t lose mary-kate and ashley!
we’ve only got one body to work with, so what can we do to prevent it from falling apart on us? a quick search led to these articles that are more or less of the same as everything else i’ve found online:
– 30s – what changes and how to fix it
– living healthy in your 30s
– how to lose weight fast in your 30s
but despite all this “expert” advice, i think we all know the secret to staying young: plastic surgery and lots of it. duh.
Will Dao 