If You Enjoy A Glass Of Wine, Read This.
I enjoy my wine. A glass with dinner most nights. Two on the weekend. Drinks with the girls on a Friday. Nothing crazy. What every woman I know does. So why do I look four months pregnant by dinner every single night? My belly bloats out tight no matter what I eat. Salad, fish, or nothing at all, it does not matter. My face is puffy in the mornings. My rings are tight by noon. And half a glass of wine now wrecks my entire next day in a way one bottle never used to. I blamed my age. I blamed my hormones. I blamed everything except the obvious, because the obvious was sitting in my hand most evenings and I did not want to look at it. I started keeping notes when I couldn't make sense of my own body anymore. Here is some of what I wrote. February 2nd I am writing this down because I need to see it on paper. Nothing in my life has changed. Same food I have always eaten. Same walks. Same everything. And yet by dinner my stomach pushes out so tight I undo my jeans at the table. I caught myself in a photo from the weekend and did not recognize my own face. Puffy. Soft. Older than I am. What is happening to me. February 19th It is not just the belly now. By 2pm I hit a wall so hard I read the same email three times and nothing lands. I am asleep on the couch by eight. My ankles thicken by the afternoon. My rings dig in. Mentioned it to the girls over wine on Friday. We laughed about our wine bellies and how we can't drink like we used to. And then we all poured another glass. I stopped wearing fitted dresses last month. I have a whole drawer of flowy tops now. I angle my body in every photo. March 4th I keep landing on the same thought and I cannot shake it. It all started together. The bloated belly, the puffy face, the exhaustion, the way half a glass wrecks me now. All of it crept in around the same stretch of time. That is not a coincidence. That is a thread. Everyone keeps handing me "it's your age," "it's hormones," "it's just
