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I noticed it in the locker room before I noticed it in the water — three women my age who had quietly stopped looking puffy, all in the same Tuesday morning pool class, all within about two months of each other. I want to tell you the whole story, because once I figured out what was happening in that locker room, it changed everything for me. My name is Diane. I am 61. I live in Naperville, Illinois. I am a retired bank branch manager. I have been doing the Tuesday and Thursday morning water aerobics class at my local Y for about six years, ever since my knees told me walking on pavement was over. There are about fifteen of us in the class, mostly women between 55 and 70, and over six years you get to know bodies. You see the same women in the same locker room twice a week. You know who is struggling with what. Here is the problem I had been quietly living with. For about four years my body had been holding fluid. My face was heavy in the mornings. My hands were swollen enough that I had stopped wearing my rings. My ankles and lower legs by the afternoon looked like they belonged to someone older than me. I had been to the doctor twice about it. Normal labs both times. Watch your sodium, drink more water, it's your age, it's your hormones. I had accepted it. I had decided this was just what 61 looked like. Then last spring, in the locker room after class, I noticed Carol. Carol is about my age. She had been in the class as long as I had. And for years she had looked the way I looked — heavy in the face, swollen in the hands, that fluid-retention look that women our age get and stop talking about. But that morning in the locker room, Carol looked different. Lighter. Her face had its structure back. She looked like she had lost ten pounds, except I could tell it was not weight, because the change was in her face and her hands, not her frame. I said, "Carol, you look fantastic. What's your secret." And Carol — toweling off, not even looking u
