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This is Carla Birnberg, one of the incredibly together women I’ve met in doing this blog and trying to get the word out about the book.

A few months back, I did a podcast with her and her friend Shauna (they comprise Two Fit Chicks). It was over the phone–Carla is in Austin and Shauna is in Scotland–but was so taken by their BREATHTAKINGLY SANE attitude about fitness and body image and just plain enjoying your life without making yourself crazy that I sat there nodding like a bobble head, as if anyone could see me, and breathing “yeah!” into the phone. Do yourself a favor and check them out, as well as Carla’s blog, Mizfitonline.com.

In any case, Carla says in her video that she didn’t consider herself a Formerly–she is her best self now, at 41, and doesn’t think of herself as Formerly anything. I can understand that. I, too, feel I’m my best self at 43, although I do get a kick out of sifting through the past, what I’ve learned and that which I am no longer. It’s all what you choose to do with your allotted 24 daily hours. Carla, obviously, uses more of that time for bicep curls than I do, while I prefer gazing at my navel. When I can find it within the folds of my mom belly.

Whatevs. Carla is a “Finally,” which it turns out you can be without considering yourself a “Formerly.” Labels only matter if they’re meaningful, and “Finally” works for me.

First of all, vomit. Did Time really have to headline this piece “The Science of Cougar Sex: Why Older Women Lust”?

It’s a report on a study by evolutionary psychologist David Buss, the guy at UT Austin who explains much of current human behavior in terms of our being programmed over time to seek out characteristics that reflect reproductive fitness in our partners. In the past, Buss’s work was used to explain how men are basically hardwired to be horndogs for younger, easily impregnateable women.

Now he’s wondering, why would “older” women–which in the study is defined as 27 to 45, just in case you were deluded in thinking you only recently left the category of young–be so sexual? His theory is that as our fertility wanes, we increase the frequency of our sexual encounters (or at least want to) in a last ditch effort to propagate the species before our eggs expire entirely. (more…)