Though I come from a family of beer drinkers, I was never much into drinking. I rarely drank as a teenager, and even into my 20s, drinking didn’t play a big part in my life, other than the fruity cocktails I enjoyed on occasion.
Then two things happened: I had kids, and I discovered wine.
At first, I drank wine only socially, but sometime in my early 40s, I started drinking a glass of white wine around 5:30 every day. I would sip it as I finished up whatever piece of writing I was working on, certain that the low-level buzz inspired more creativity in those last few minutes of work.
My husband — the family cook — would be in the kitchen making dinner, and the kids would inevitably be running around or speed-talking at me as they passed by my office on the way to play outside. It was my modernized and gender flip-flopped version of the dynamic I remembered fondly from childhood: my dad sitting at the kitchen table drinking a beer and reading the daily paper, while my mom cooked and the kids ran around. The wine helped me relax, shrug off the day, and transition from work mode to parent mode. I loved it.
Each week, when my husband was making the grocery list, I would say, “Don’t forget the wine.” It became a bit of a joke: Judi needs her wine! Is it wine time yet? I always wanted to make sure a bottle was chilling, and that I didn’t have to drive anywhere between 5 and 6. If I did, I’d be super irritated that I’d miss my glass.
I knew there was a trend of women drinking more, and I read piece after piece about women coming to terms with their drinking problems. But I didn’t have a problem: I had only one drink a day.
But after three or four years of my evening glass of wine, let me tell you what I did have: 10 extra pounds, a slightly bloated feeling after dinner most nights, increasing rosacea and anxiety that a small chunk of every day was organized around alcohol.
And was I really getting a lot out of it? The “creativity” buzz that wine supposedly brought to my writing was nearly always some jumbled idea I would quickly rewrite the next day. Not only that, my kids, 9 and 11, saw their mom fawning over a glass of wine every night, and coming to the dinner table just a little too happy — all the while delivering a steady stream of lectures about teenagers getting addicted to vices like vaping.
One morning several months ago, it hit me that if I really wanted to feel healthier and combat perimenopausal weight gain, I needed to cut out the daily drinking. I decided I would drink a glass only on the weekend if we went out to eat. No more bottles of wine at home.
I thought this would be achingly hard — my wine time! — but was surprised to discover that it wasn’t. I was motivated to shed those pounds, and seeing if wine was the culprit felt like a fun experiment, versus a deprivation.
Could changing something relatively small — a 5-ounce glass of wine is only 120 calories — make a difference? Over the course of three months, the answer unfolded: Yes, in fact, it did make a difference, and I lost the 10 pounds I had slowly gained. My clothes fit nicely again, I no longer felt bloated after dinner, and I was just more energetic.
If you’re wondering how this math could possibly add up, I should mention that cutting out wine meant I also cut out the mini plate of cheese and crackers I had started making to go along with the wine, which was easily 250 calories. I also stopped eating an extra portion at dinner — another 300 to 400 calories — because I had my wits about me and better recognized that I was feeling full. I did boost my exercise a bit, increasing my running mileage from about 12 miles a week to about 18, but other than that, I didn’t do anything else differently.
There were other physical benefits, too. The worsening small red patches on my cheekbones, rosacea, mostly vanished, consistent with research findings that drinking wine, and especially white wine, can aggravate the condition. There is also evidence that just one alcoholic drink a day increases a woman’s risk for breast cancer by 5 to 9 percent. I know cancer risk is a complicated thing, but I’ll take every opportunity to tip the odds in my favor.
Weight loss may have been my impetus, but the truth is, what happened on the scale is the least interesting part. Paying attention to my alcohol intake made me realize how many unexamined statements I uttered about needing wine to get through something. Cutting back on drinking helped me get back to the person who didn’t need to look outside herself for comfort. It also made me feel like less of a hypocrite as a parent.
My project isn’t to be mistaken for sobriety. I’ve watched too many friends claw their way through recovery, and grieved a brother who never could. I wouldn’t dare appropriate their journey. I’m not “sober curious.” I’m just drinking less.
Now, if I order a glass of pinot grigio when I’m out with my family for Saturday night pizza, I sip it slowly and feel gratitude that the genes didn’t fall down on the side they so easily could have. I also feel gratitude that I decided I didn’t need to have a problem to start solving some problems.
Judi Ketteler is the author of “Would I Lie to You? The Amazing Power of Being Honest in a World That Lies,” due out Dec. 31.