Changes in Weight and Appetite as We Age

I’m visiting my parents in my hometown of Daytona Beach, Florida. As you might guess, I was never much for the beach. My high school in the 1970s was quite the Jimmy Buffett surfer dude kind of scene. I had a classmate who refused to go with her family on a European trip because it would interfere with the first days of suntanning season and she’d be more pale than everyone else when she got back home.

My parents are getting older and I’m seeing how they are changing—and what’s staying the same. My mother will be 76 this year. She has always been very thin and very active. She’s always eaten very little and has a natural preference for vegetables and light foods. She really doesn’t care for anything sweet. Cafeterias are a bit of a Southern thing. They were often our family’s restaurants of choice when I was a kid because my mom would want to make a meal of all vegetable side dishes. She remains very thin today and is the envy of her friends. She walks several miles every morning and does two back-to-back water aerobics classes right afterward. The medical center where she worked for many years recently called her back for part time work. She has always made it a habit to never use the elevators in the 10-story building where she works.

This is who my mother has always been. She’s always been very connected to her body. She likes her clothing to fit her very closely and she would know if she gained a half pound. She’s made no specific choices for some behaviors while denying herself others. Her lifestyle has never required discipline. She never set goals. She continues to do what’s always been natural for her.

My father, on the other hand, is changing as he’s aging. At 83, he’s amazingly fit and active. He is the kind of man who always wants to be working. After running a wholesale barber and beauty products business for most of my life, he “retired” by renewing his barber license and opening a shop. He’s down there by 7:15am every day. He works Saturday for as long as he gets customers. He cleans the shop and does his laundry on Sunday. I have spent a few days at the shop with him; he’s up and down on his feet much of the time.

My Dad was always chubby. I remember my mother nagging him a bit for what he’d eat out on the road. Fast food and snacking were his typical diet as he spent his days driving a truck around the state of Florida. Back at home, my Dad wanted big meals with big slabs of meat. My mother indulged him his favorite Southern dessert—biscuits slathered in peanut butter and covered in pancake syrup. My Dad has always been a darn good cook. Like my grandmother did, he makes outstanding fried chicken. Or at least he used to. Home just a few days, I’m amazed to see how little my Dad eats now. My Mom says he just doesn’t seem to want it anymore. Earlier this week I saw him eat a small bowl of cereal for breakfast then for lunch at the shop, he made himself a sandwich with deli ham. No snacking; no going out for lunch. He eats whatever my Mom eats for dinner and his portions are pretty modest. He is still the master of the grill but the steaks are a few ounces now instead of more than a pound each.

My father has always had a need to feel “busy.” Now eating a dramatically different diet from his younger years, this naturally busy lifestyle is paying off in health benefits as he’s aging.

My father is the last of his siblings. I am the identical bodytype of all my aunts and my grandmother. Dad’s eldest sister was a prime example of how not to live. A lifelong chain smoker, she had tuberculosis and spent many years addicted to prescription drugs. She was extremely overweight and had such a sickly appearance that she scared me when I was little. Still, the incredible Kight genes saw her into her 70s. My grandmother lived to be 93 and was on no medications. Her diet staples were fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, and brownies. Her large hips exacerbated her arthritis, the only health issue the Kights share, myself included.

I’ve spent my life wishing I could have been like my mother with her very low interest in food and her natural preference for everything good for you. We all live with the hand of genetic cards we’re dealt. I have to admit my hand is actually pretty darn good. While my mother’s family has shared diabetes, high cholesterol that’s resistant to diet, depression, heart disease, and female medical issues, my father’s family can boast of several centenarians and little more than painful joints. And oh yeah, those big hips and thick legs. When I really think about it, I could have been doomed to my mother’s thinness along with her lifelong prescriptions to a handful of daily pills and hormone patches.

I’ll take whole foods and a daily dose of exercise, thanks.