It was late afternoon. The house was clean, the dog tuckered out from the sun, I’d finished all my writing for the day, and I’d clocked an entire hour on the Wii Fit. The Husband was on his way home to get ready for our date night (dinner and then the animated movie “9″), and then I looked at that bottle of Chilean red that had been patiently waiting for me to notice it. I picked it up and looked closer. A screw cap. Even better. Yes, I was indeed meant to have a glass for the first time in what seemed like months.
I’ve been holding back on these wine posts lately, for several reasons. One being a very boring explanation about how much money it’s costing me to burn through a bottle a week.
The other involves me realizing I might be indulging in too much of a good thing. There’s nothing quite like cold hard facts, in the form of worrying triglyceride numbers and a call from the doctor.
I know what you’re thinking. Red wine is supposed to be good for the heart. It is. I’m no expert, but I have a hunch that when said glass(es) of red wine shows up as superfluous calories at the end of every day, you end up with a lot of extra simple sugars, and the heart-healthy effects become sort of a wash. Or worse.
So, about a month ago, the Husband and I embarked on a new journey together. We made a pact not to eat or drink any extra calories after 7 p.m. After one week of that, we agreed to enhance our new lifestyle with lots of water. Just doing those two things alone had a staggering result on my wine intake. Dealing with the urge to micturate all day long and having to interrupt every task to run to the bathroom because of all that water drinking really makes a girl not even want to look at any liquid beverage after 7 p.m.
One thing I know for sure is I’ve been sleeping a whole lot deeper by letting my metabolism shut down from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Another thing I know is I’m feeling better. Not that I felt noticeably bad before that post-blood-test phone call from the doc. It’s just that now, I feel like I’m back on a vitamin regimen, even though I’m not. (Yeah, that’s another boring story about money.)
This week I got a little reminder to be kind to my body and my spirit, even while I’m in the midst of this get-healthy boot camp lifestyle. This reminder came in the form of me. Well, not exactly me. Someone who could be my long lost twin. She’s shorter than I am, and of a different nationality. But we have the same complexion, hairstyle, face shape, affinity for fitted black tee shirts and — whoa — the same body type. The difference is, she loves her little roly-poly belly. And I do not love mine. She can do amazing, wonderful, mesmerizing things with that belly, not the least of which is comfortably exposing it to a class of 50 strange women.
She is my belly dancing instructor, and she is me in a parallel universe. This is the universe where I’m not raised by Calvinists to be embarrassed and overly modest about my curves; where I don’t make apologies for my astonishing cup size; where my hips and the “junk in my trunk” are free to move on their own, separately from the rest of my body; where I do not get indoctrinated by well-meaning but overheated Southern belles on the necessity of wearing tummy-controlling garments under tee shirts in the summer; where I do not bother to ask the Husband or anybody “does this outfit look OK?” or “does this shirt cling too much on the muffin top?”; where I’ve never even heard the term “muffin top,” for that matter; where my saintly mother’s agonizing self-consciousness does not rub off on me; where I’ve told every man or woman who ever uttered an unsolicited comment on my or another woman’s weight to eff off.
This Woman, this Parallel Me, actually had me and the 50 other strangers lifting up our shirts and touching our own bellies this week. In two different places. And then, she made us pooch them out as far as they could go. This is not something we nice Calvinist women like to do. We would rather forget we have these things called bellies, and instead get our exercise by abusing our bodies with running, power-walking, cold-hard machinery at the gym, and then get back to tending the tomato plants. A good dose of guilt and repression also helps burn off calories the rest of the day. We certainly are not interested in isolating the different muscles underneath our bellies. Nor do we like to think about strengthening those muscles in order to rhythmically shake a jingly-jangly scarf. After all, that could lead to sensuality, which we all know is a gateway to a whole lot of other extremely fun things we’d only feel guilty about later.
At the end of class, Parallel Me reminded us to spend the week practicing our moves, taking in a bit more potassium to support our muscles, drink lots of water, but most importantly, to be good to ourselves. Relax. Take naps. Have a glass of wine.
So I did. A nice, fruity, medium-bodied dry red. Just one glass. To clean the pipes, and to be good to me. All before 7 p.m.
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