How Much is Too Much?

I don’t know about you, but my newsfeed gets inundated with articles on health and wellness.  Things like, “Even moderate alcohol consumption is not good for you”, “Cholesterol culprits”, “Salt the silent killer”, “Eggs are bad for you. No wait, eggs are good for you”, “Butter is bad for you. No wait, butter is good for you.”

My head is spinning and I am thoroughly confused about what I should or should not consume, and more to the point, at what amounts I should consume or not consume them.

Take alcohol.  I have become incredibly fond of wine.  During the early months of the pandemic, my fondness of wine grew exponentially.  I began reading these articles however, and realized, hmm…..this might not be good. Perhaps I should cut back.  How much is too much though?

They say one glass of wine per day for a woman, two for a man.  Damn them and the patriarchal society we live in where the man gets all the advantages. And, how much is a glass anyway? Is it 4 oz? 5? 6? I’d love it if it were 8 oz, but I am pretty sure that’s not the case.  Turns out it’s 5 oz. 

So, I think, well, if I limit myself to only drinking on the weekend, I can take my seven glasses for the week and condense them to the weekend only.  Great idea I think to myself. 

But, wait.  What? You can’t do that? No averaging allowed?  I find out that it must be only one drink per day. If I drink one per day every day I am a moderate drinker.  If I have 6 glasses over 3 days I am an excessive drinker.  Argh!!  What’s a wine lover to do?

Well, let’s try starting with a clean slate, I thought.  Also all over my news feed was this thing they call Dry January.  No alcohol at all for the entire month of January.  Let’s give it a go.  6 days into January and I got invited to a party.  Oh boy.  First big temptation hurdle.  I brought my own bottle of water.   Somehow, I don’t think BYOB has anything to fear from BYOW.  

Anyway, I told myself, ‘your liver is loving you right now, stick with it, girl!’ Made it through the party, but not a couple of days later, I was like, screw it.  I can have ONE glass. Dry January became dry-ish January.

Since then, in an attempt to moderate my intake, I have been using one of my wine glasses from one of the wineries we’d visited previously.  It has the line on it that measures exactly 5 ounces.  My nice Riedel glasses are now gathering dust. 

I pour precisely 5 ounces.  I limit it to the weekend only.  Except if I am out to dinner with friends. Or I am feeling particularly stressed about something. Or there is some other fun weekday experience. Or it’s Thursday and it’s almost the weekend.  Or…well…you get the idea, lol.  Exceptions to rules are so much better than rules, don’t you think? But I feel good that I at least established some rules in the first place.  Well, maybe not so much rules as guidelines. Loose guidelines. Which are really the best kind of guidelines, I think.

I realize though if I am only going to have 3 glasses of wine a week, assuming I am sticking to my rules a.k.a guidelines, there are still two glasses of wine left in the bottle.  Can’t waste perfectly good wine.  I could order one of those special devices that lets you keep opened wine for long periods. But think, nah. What fun would that be?  Join me will you and raise a glass or 5 to moderation or excess.  You can pick your poison.  I know I’ve picked mine.