Delia Lloyd

Woman doing yoga at sunset

My Michael Phelps Moment: Why I’m a Yoga Convert

Delia Lloyd
Let’s start with the fact that I have a crush on my yoga instructor. (Because, really, what’s the point of taking an exercise class if you don’t develop a crush on your instructor?) She’s warm and encouraging and has this lovely, mellifluous English accent. It’s like taking a class from a giant bottle of jojoba bath oil. She’s also great at giving you step by step instructions. She’s positively obsessed with making sure that your three middle toes are lifted during all postures, something which turns out to be surprisingly difficult. I was a reluctant convert to yoga, even though my husband and several close friends had been doing it for years. Part of it was that the whole yoga gestalt seemed too groovy for the likes of me...
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My She Shed Where I Get It Done

Delia Lloyd
My area of refuge during lockdown has become this over-crowded storage closet in our basement. It’s stuffed to the gills with miscellaneous Hannukah and Christmas decorations (a blue Santa and a lamb wearing a menorah dress come to mind)…old board games like Battleship and Parcheesi that we’ve long since ceased playing…mismatched dishes that are occasionally called upon for service…and the odd shower curtain (just cuz’). The room feels like what might feature in a 60-second out-take reel on our family life since moving overseas 14 years ago. In short, this room is a mess. And yet, when I need to get away from other people (err…that would be my family), that’s where I go. I meditate there.I do online aerobics classes there. Sometimes, I even deliver webinars there...
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Who Are You

Personality Traits We Inherit from Our Parents

Delia Lloyd
Bolton & Bolton argue that two main dimensions can explain and predict how people behave: assertiveness and responsiveness. Assertiveness is the degree to which people’s behavior is seen as forceful and directive.  Responsiveness is the degree to which people are seen as showing emotions or demonstrating sensitivity. From a personal standpoint, what I find interesting about this model is how perfectly I can place my parents into two of those boxes. My mother was your classic Driver:  highly organized, efficient and action-oriented, but at times practical to a fault. My father was a vintage Expressive: an enthusiastic storyteller who connected with people easily, but couldn’t keep track of details....
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Woman getting haircut

Why I’m Able to Relax During a Haircut

Delia Lloyd
I was sitting in my hair salon the other day and an extraordinary thing happened. I made it through not one, not two, but halfway through a third New Yorker I'd brought along with me to read...I knew in that brief period of happiness on Saturday that this was a feeling that I needed to pay attention to. To return to. To learn from. To make the rest of my week—or at least my weekends—more like that moment. To somehow build in more guilt-free zones. I'm not sure that will happen. But it was good to feel it and acknowledge it....
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Straight Teeth

5 Reasons to Get Braces as a Grown Up

Delia Lloyd
Here are five reasons to think about getting braces as an adult: a.  Your teeth move as you age. I know. You thought you were done with all of this when you had braces as a teenager. Alas, you were not. All the dentists I’ve seen in the past decade—and there have been a fair few, including (cough) a dental psychologist—have confirmed that your teeth move as you age. It’s called teeth shifting and it’s a thang. Sadly, this happens even if you wear a mouthguard, because teeth grinding exacerbates that movement. Sigh AND........
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Rainbow hair

You Really Shouldn’t Dye Your Hair

Delia Lloyd
“Your hair’s just like my sister’s!” she cooed, as I entered the salon. “Let’s do a mixture of blonde, brown and ginger!” Who knew that, in London, “ginger” meant pink? (Answer: my mother, who read all those nineteenth century English novels I never managed to get around to). Here I thought I was softening my look with some kind of golden honey tone, and instead I emerged with magenta streaks. I looked like some rare breed of Eurasian squirrel....
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zippered mouth, shut up, closed lips

Thinking of Giving Up Swearing

Delia Lloyd
In recent years, I’ve started swearing more and more: with friends, with colleagues, with the family. For a long time, I felt OK about that. For starters, I enjoy it. And research shows that swearing has a number of benefits. One study found links between how fluent a person is in the English language and how fluent they are in swearing. This “verbal fluency” suggests that having a wide range of swears at your disposal enables you to communicate with maximum effectiveness....
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happy woman walk in forest

5 Reasons to Keep Walking as You Age!

Delia Lloyd
As we in the UK enter our second lockdown, I am revisiting some of the coping strategies I developed during the first lockdown. In addition to cooking more and doing micro workouts, I’ve returned to my daily walks with a vengeance. Even if you’re not currently in lockdown, here are 5 reasons to keep walking as you age:...
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Woman exercising

Getting Toned in My 50’s

Delia Lloyd
“You’re thin, but you’re flabby.” So spoke my 16 year-old daughter when we went on a beach vacation this summer. She was referring particularly to my arms. After years of running, my legs are decently toned. But even after I replaced running with swimming several years back, my arms still look like some sort of hastily improvised, white surrender flag: long sticks with loose marshmallow-like blobs of flesh swinging off them....
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Billy Joel

Billy Joel and BA50: 5 Billy Joel Songs That Resonate For Us After 50

Delia Lloyd
I’ve been listening to Billy Joel again. Yes, I say that loudly, proudly and unabashedly. If you grew up in the 1970s, it’s pretty impossible *not* to be in love with Billy Joel. When “The Stranger” was released in 1977, it was all anyone listened to for several years. My husband gets this. He’s the one who got me started on my new Billy Joel kick. He recently came across a series of videos of Billy performing his songs before a live audience. As Billy performs each song,...
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Delia Lloyd

Delia Lloyd

Delia Lloyd is an American writer and communications consultant based in London. Her writing has appeared in outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, and The BBC World Service. She blogs about adulthood at realdelia.com and is a visiting fellow at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing. Follow her on Twitter @realdelia.