I’m Too Fat To Cut My Toe Nails

Yes those are my toes and I am too fat and stiff to cut them.

Yes, those are my toe nails. Yes, they really get that long. Not only are they long, they are hard and sharp. I really should have been born a bird, I already have the talons. I am just glad that at this age they are not yellowed, sickly, long and turned under. They are actually very healthy toe nails.

In yoga I get plenty of time to stare at my nails. There are plenty of poses in both the standing series and the floor series that have me looking at my toes or grabbing my toes. So you would think that I would be all over cutting them and keeping them looking pretty for class.

The reality is that as I have gotten old, fat, and stiff, my ability to cut my nails has been deminished. Not such a big deal, really, is it? I could always go get a pedicure and keep my inability to cut my nails a secret. Surely, I only go and get pedicures because I love the leg massage.

But there is a deeper reality that I must face, that we all must face and that is the loss of a daily living skill. My big belly gets in the way of effective toe nail cutting. My tight hips make it difficult to get my feet close enough to my face, so that I can see what I am doing.

To top that off, my nails are so hard that I have literally broken nail clippers. It is a task that I have come to struggle through. It is a struggle, I sit in a chair, I bend over and place the foot on the ground and reach. My stomach is still so large that I get winded from collapsing that much fat on to my lungs. My left foot is easier than my right foot, due to my right hip being so locked up.

After loosing 20 pounds it was better, but still a struggle.  Cutting my toe nails is one of the things I want to be be able to do with ease and grace. Not a struggle that reminds me how much flexibility I have lost as I age. Nor a struggle that winds me every time I cut them off. I let my nails grow emabarassingly long. I know the people next to me in class see them as I bend over and reach for them. I try to hide them under the bench before and after class.

This is the reality of being over weight and out of shape, you simply loose daily living skills. I just don’t think I am ready to loose skills at this age. I am only 47 years old. That is suposed to be the new ‘thrity-something’, at the rate I was going I was going to hit 60 before I hit 50.

To me this is a real issue that needs to be addressed, aside from the how wonderful and sexy it can feel to be thin. We need to address the loss of daily living skills as we age. We are getting older and if we are not taking care of our bodies we begin to loose skills that allow us to live independently.

Maybe cutting my own toes nails is a long way from living in a nursing home, but the deterioration begins somewhere. With me it was my toe nails!

It was a lot easier to cut them today, not perfect, but 20 pounds easier. This is the real deal with getting fat. You find all kinds of things are tougher. To be honest wiping my ass was starting to be a difficult reach.  It is no wonder that once we cross the threshold into obesity, we even get larger. Pleasure becomes more elusive.

But our mouths find pleasure in food. You can be as large as a house and as immobile as a turtle and still get pleasure from food. In fact it becomes one of the biggest pleasures in our lives because it takes very little effort and the rewards are so huge. They become even greater when they are our only pleasures, especially when movement becomes a chore.

Conversely lossing weight and improving your health physically is a lot of effort. A huge amount of effort. For me the effort was and is monumental. The constant craving for the pleasure of food, especially when everything in your life appears to be falling apart, the last thing you want to address is the sole root of all pleasure.

Yes, it is a rather silly post, I am too fat and stiff to cut my toe nails. I won’t be for long! I won’t let this happen again. I want to live and cutting my nails with ease is as good of place to start.

Yoga makes it easier for me to move. I am less sore and generally feel better. My body is starting to feel young again and I have hope.