What No One Tells You About Turning 40 and Living a “Healthy” Life

Stefanie Cybulski
26 minutes ago
3 min read

When I was a kid, the adults in my life were very, very concerned about my future safety.

Elementary school and middle school were basically a never-ending preparation course for a world filled with lurking strangers in trench coats, aggressive drug dealers with hurt feelings, and spontaneous fires breaking out at every turn. I was ready. I had Stranger Danger drilled into my soul. D.A.R.E. taught me that at any social gathering, someone would inevitably shove drugs in my face and call me a loser if I declined. And thanks to repeated fire safety assemblies, I was confident that “Stop, Drop, and Roll” would be a weekly life skill, right up there with brushing my teeth.

Naturally, I assumed adulthood would be chaos.

Random men hiding behind trees. Drugs everywhere. Constant fires.

But then I grew up.

And here’s what actually happened.

Trench coats never came into fashion. The one time I was offered drugs at a party my junior year of college, I said, “No thanks,” and the guy shrugged, said “alright,” and passed the plate to someone else. No peer pressure. No dramatic confrontation. And fires? Other than fireplaces and candles (which I light on purpose), I have yet to encounter a rogue blaze requiring me to drop to the ground and roll like my life depended on it.

What no one warned me about—what not a single adult thought to prepare me for—was this.

The constant, low-level panic that I am not walking enough steps in a day.

The realization that 10,000 steps is apparently the bare minimum for survival and that if I don’t hit it, my FitBit Watch will quietly judge me while I sleep. The sudden requirement to know exactly how much protein and water I consume daily. And the shocking discovery that the answer to nearly every modern health question is… cottage cheese.

Did anyone mention this in fourth grade? No.

At no point did a teacher pull me aside and say, “One day, you will measure your happiness and self-worth in grams of protein, and you will learn 47 ways to incorporate cottage cheese into meals that have no business containing cottage cheese.”

And yet—here we are.

Cottage cheese is having a moment. A renaissance, really. It’s getting the same glow-up cauliflower got a decade ago when it became pizza crust, rice, and an entire personality. High protein! Low fat! Blend it! Bake it! Eat it sweet! Eat it savory! Suddenly, I’m in the dairy aisle wondering how this became my life.

Don’t get me wrong—I understand the importance of nutrition. I believe in strength training. I believe in fueling your body properly. I like feeling strong and healthy. I just wasn’t emotionally prepared for the reality that when the clock struck midnight the night before I turned 40, my body would immediately transform from a glistening carriage into a rotting pumpkin unless I weighed every gram of food and tracked my fiber intake like it was a full-time job.

No one warned me that adulthood would look less like avoiding sketchy strangers and more like asking, “Wait, how much protein is in this?” before every single meal.