Best Life!

The first new Best Life show was on yesterday, and it was fabulous Oprah-info-tainment. The first segment was pure confessonal, with Oprah laying bare the shame and self-loathing she felt on stage standing next to Cher and Tina Turner, both her elders and her slimmers, in a dress she hadn't planned on wearing because the one she wanted had gotten too tight. Oh, I hate that feeling, when the damn zipper won't go up, or it does go up, but everything else pulls and shifts in a sad effort to accomodate the extra hippage. I'm not sure when the Cher and Tina show aired, but I do remember watching it and never once thinking that Oprah seemed particularly heavy or at all miserable. But evidentally she was in hell. What I do remember is Tina Turner saying she liked being her age, while Cher's blunt rebuttal was someething like, "being old sucks." Truth is, Cher and Tina both have a point, as Oprah's current show seemed to be saying.

From her earliest years Oprah was an overachiever, maybe even workaholic, as the segment with her assistant Novana, pointed out. Novona showed a typical page from last year's calendar, which began at 6 a.m. and included three tapings, preproduction meetings, and a whole bunch of other stuff adding up to a 14-hour day with no breaks. "I wasn't on my own to-do list," is how Oprah puts it. But we all worked that way when we were young and ambitious. We were all out of balance. And like myself, when Oprah was young and famished, she'd grab the potato chips. Another thing we have in common. I could kill a bag in one sitting, easy, and I bet she could, too. Buit we can't get away with that now. Well, maybe if we split a bag...?

The point is, Oprah's not young anymore, and neither am I. I'm guessing she's done a little Botox here, a little wrinkle filler there, and I'd be stunned if Andre the hairdresser isn't regularly touching up the gray... But despite how great she always looks, Oprah says she felt much of 2008 feeling exhausted and defeated. I'm pretty sure that when Oprah's thyroid misfired earlier this year -- which she says is when the fat started to win -- it was because of age-related hormone changes. So like I said, Cher got it right. Age does suck.

"Age is a bear," Bob Greene said during the show's second segment, adding -- as if he needed to-- that you can't work the same way at 50 that you could at 30 or 40. He noticed Oprah on the wane and wanted to know were the "zest" had gone. "Are you fulfilled?" he wanted to know. "Are you taking care of yourself?" And at least part of his meaning was, "Are you using the gym?" Which leads us to another reason age sucks. While you (and I and Oprah) may've been able to starve ourselves into ass-hugging Calvins, now we gotta move that ass. Every day. Bless her heart, Oprah reiterated her hatred of exercise, but now she's lifting weights and doing the elliptical machine at least 30 minutes daily at a pace that allows a pant-pant level of conversation and occasional burst into "She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain When She Comes." If that was the last song Oprah heard in a gym, then it really has been a long time.

Of course this wouldn't be an Oprah health-and-fitness show without a little work on the soul, and in this case, it comes in the form of a questionnaire, asking among other things: Why are you overweight? (This reminds me of the old Richard Simmons show, in which he drove a Rolls Royce or something with the license plate Y R U FAT, a question that if answered honestly and addressed appropriately, should lead to a different license plate, Y R U THIN. Right?) Bob Greene and Oprah want us to journal on these questions, digging deep to uncover what we're really hungry for. What are you looking for in life that hasn't come your way? Why haven't you been able to maintain your weight in the past? And why do you want to lose the weight?"

I think about how I might've answered these things 20 or 30 years ago: "I'm overweight because all the models in Seventeen weigh less than 120 pounds and I want the number on my scale to match theirs." "I'm hungry for lawn clippings because I haven't eaten for two days and now the smell of the grass is making me salivate." "I want to lose the weight because I read someplace you can't be too thin. Which means if you're not too thin, you're not perfect, which I have to be to make up for everything else that's wrong with me."

And this leads me to the reason I think Tina Turner also had it right: It's good be old. When I was young I may have been skinnier, but I was sure crazier. At least I can see that now. Bob Greene says that if any part of your answers indicates you'll be hapy if you reach a certain size or weight, then he knows right there you're screwed. That didn't come as any shock to me. It would've when I was 21. But not anymore. Age has given me that gift. And believe me, it was the only gift.

So while I may be grateful for the wisdom that comes with age, I'm very eager to see what happens on the next Oprah, when Dr. Oz reveals the single most important thing we can do to hold onto our youth. God, I hope it's not cutting calories!