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The writings of a former wine mom and sometime supermom maintaining weight loss, workouts, and wits. Proudly alcohol-free since July 5, 2018.

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Hi, I’m Jen.

An occasional supermom of two aspiring superheroes, I have been known to polish off a jar of Nutella and/or a bottle of wine in one sitting.

But after six years of motherhood under my too-tight belt, I decided to cut the Nutella habit and invest in self-care. In 2017, I lost 25 pounds with Weight Watchers (now WW) and started exercising regularly again. In 2018, I maintained my weight loss, ramped up my workouts, and began to explore my dysfunctional relationship with wine.

Having completed Dry January and then another 76-day alcohol-free stint in the spring, I committed to One Year Alcohol-Free on July 5, 2018. July 4, 2019 was my Independence Day and I’m proud to be navigating #momlife without booze.

Find me on Instagram! @maintaining_mama

Yes, @ww, cheers to binge drinking! Cheers to a wine glass that holds an entire bottle! Let’s toast a substance that kills one in ten American women and is a known carcinogen! Let’s raise a giant glass along with our esteemed spokeswoman @oprah and make light of getting wasted! Because binge drinking is in clear alignment with WW’s number one brand value: WELLNESS. Or is it #wine?⁣ ⁣ Since I left wine behind 565 days ago, I miss the grogginess caused by my gray area drinking, but I really miss the hangovers. I miss my wine belly too. I miss my congested skin and dull eyes. I long for the nights when I would wake soaked in sweat at 3am. I miss having little energy and less self-respect. Thank goodness WW and Oprah are here to encourage heavy drinking! Bottoms up, y’all!⁣ ⁣ 👉 Shame on you, WW and Oprah. I am disgusted by WW’s enthusiastic support of Oprah’s tone-deaf, dangerous post. I have lost complete faith in this company’s authenticity and if it were not for Connect - the WW social media network - I would cancel my membership immediately. ⁣ ⁣ But I will stay. I will stay because I believe in the power of Connect to help and inspire. I never would have gotten to where I am in my personal wellness journey without the support I received on Connect, and I want to continue to pay it forward. It’s just a shame that I do so under the umbrella of a company whose brand values are a sham. ⁣ ⁣ 👉 WW, please delete your comment on Oprah’s post. ⁣ 👉👉 Better yet - Oprah, please delete your post!⁣ And one final plea to you both: Please stop making light of binge drinking. There is simply nothing funny about it.⁣ #dryjanuary #soberaf #ichoosenobooze #winemom #sober #soberlife #grayareadrinking #sobermovement #sobermom #sobermommovement #aflife #alcoholfree #alcohol

“A total mood swing! Doable tasks felt impossible. Clutter that hadn’t bothered me all week made me irate. Before I completely blew up, I paused. ‘This is not like me. I can’t remember the last time I felt like this. What is different tonight? What could have caused this?’” The answer is on the blog 🤪 New post is up (link in bio). This refined sugar-free month has been enlightening to say the least! 🍔🙊 #dryjanuary #AFday563 #soberaf #jomo #ichoosenobooze #winemom #sober #soberlife #grayareadrinking #sobermovement #sobermom #sobermommovement #pelotonsobersquad #noaddedsugar #sugarfree #norefinedsugar

To think I once thought I was the only one. The only one who struggled to get through a witching hour with my young children without wine. The only one who started thinking about my second glass when I was only a few sips into my first. The only one who would wake sweating at 3AM and drowning in a sea of shame a few hours later. The only wine mom who couldn’t control her wine habit.⁣ ⁣ Now I know the truth. I was never the only one. Alcohol just convinced my brain that I was. ⁣ ⁣ This morning I hopped on my #PelotonTread and was joined by 10 members of the @pelotonsobersquad to celebrate #DryJanuary in sweat with @mattymaggiacomo and @ladygaga. This afternoon I took @codyrigsby’s Gaga ride on demand, where I earned my swarm badge as the 35th #AFSquad member to take the ride.⁣ ⁣ The #PelotonSoberSquad is now over 950 members strong. Some of us proudly display #AFSquad in our Peloton profiles; others prefer to stay more anonymous. Some of us are sober, others are sober curious or on a booze break. But we are all in this together: a journey of self-improvement and offering support to others along the way. ⁣ ⁣ The power of community is limitless. I feel it today. I am so proud of this group, and so grateful to @by.grit.and.grace for inviting me to start it with her. We are a movement!⁣ ⁣ 👉If you have struggled or are currently struggling with alcohol, you already know from reading this that you are not alone. Keep reading. Keep reaching out. Find your people. The AF universe is vast and will only continue to grow 🌕⁣ #AFday562 #soberaf #jomo #ichoosenobooze #winemom #sober #soberlife #grayareadrinking #sobermovement #sobermom #sobermommovement

This happened to me with #alcohol. It took my awhile, but my head is back in charge. This also happened to me with #sugar. And now that I am turning my attention to my sugar addiction (strong word, addiction, but accurate in this case I think) I’m realizing that I sugar has been in control of me since before I even started drinking. It’s my OG craving and it’s going to take awhile to put a crack in its stronghold. But I will do it. I vanquished the wine witch. I can conquer the sugar monster. 👉 One day at a time. 13 days into No Added Sugar January and going strong! 💪 #dryjanuary #AFday558 #soberaf #jomo #ichoosenobooze #winemom #sober #soberlife #grayareadrinking #sobermovement #sobermom #sobermommovement #pelotonsobersquad #afsquad #sugarfree #norefinedsugar #noaddedsugar

It’s always a special day when both of these women grace my class with their presence. These instructors-turned-colleagues-turned-friends believed in my ability to teach before I believed in myself. They continue to give me immeasurable support and guidance. And they are just damn cool humans 😍 @juliehenick, your stellar technique and indomitable work ethic push me to always keep improving. You are also simply one of the nicest people I have ever met 🧡 @kelly_kell_g, I am in awe of the creativity and confidence you bring to your classes. You are also uniquely compassionate and kind 💜 Stick with the people who lift you up instead of dragging you down. Those who inspire you to be your best self and who won’t judge you when you slip. I am so grateful to have found my MMA family and so excited to venture into this new decade together 🥊💪 #dryjanuary #AFday555 #strongwomen #kickboxing #fitspo #inspo #mma #soberaf #jomo #ichoosenobooze #winemom #sober #soberlife #grayareadrinking #sobermovement #sobermom #sobermommovement

Not everyone has one thing that they are meant to do in life, or one single path to follow. Some of us are hummingbirds, flitting from flower to flower as we fill up on one interest and pursue the next. “Follow your curiosity,” says @elizabeth_gilbert_writer. ⁣ This is how I’ve always operated: curiously. I have wanted to do and be so many things throughout my life, and I’ve felt guilt about that over the years because shouldn’t I have become one big thing by now? An archaeologist or a CEO or an author or something?⁣ ⁣ Perhaps instead I’m meant to continually become. At some point over the last 18 months, I became a non-drinker. I did this by following my curiosity. I wanted to see how I felt after completing #DryJanuary, and then #TheAlcoholExperiment, and then taking a full year off drinking. What would it feel like to not indulge an alcohol craving? What if I could regain the reins of my life from the wine witch? Could I ever get to a point where I didn’t want to drink?⁣ ⁣ These were some of my questions. And I could only answer them by following my path, one day – and sometimes one hour – at a time.⁣ ⁣ Now that I am #alcoholfree I want to write about it. Really write. Like, write a whole book. But am I really capable of this? I haven’t dedicated my life to being a writer. I don’t know if I would ever want to write a second book, or even a magazine article. But this one book project has taken hold of my heart and won’t let go. It’s the flower to which I keep flitting back. I remain curious about my ability to do the writing and navigate the publishing world. So as long as this curiosity has hold of me, I am going to pursue it. One day – one hour, one sentence – at a time.⁣ ⁣(More on the blog - link in bio!) 🌸 #dryjanuary #AFday553 #soberaf #jomo #ichoosenobooze #winemom #sober #soberlife #grayareadrinking #sobermovement #sobermom #sobermommovement #pelotonsobersquad

A year and a half of alcohol freedom and here’s what that means to me: alcohol has no hold on me anymore, no place in my life anymore. There is no vacancy up in this joint. I am 100% occupied with the momentous and the mundane and everything in between, and I don’t want to miss a minute.⁣ ⁣ For two decades, I was writing a different life story. I was a binge-drinking college student, a work-hard-play-harder twentysomething, and then, in my last booze-fueled incarnation, a #winemom. An open bar, a witching hour, a holiday. A funeral, a date night, a girls night. I was enabled by any and every occasion and non-occasion. Resisting the urge to drink - say, on any given Sunday, or Tuesday, or whenever - took a Herculean amount of willpower. If I succeeded in denying myself my sauvignon blanc, I was left feeling depleted and resentful.⁣ ⁣ I was a #grayareadrinker. Jolene Park @healthy_discoveries, who bravely brought this style of drinking out into the open, defines the gray area as “the space between the extremes of ‘rock bottom’ and every-now-and-again drinking: a gray area that many, many people find an impossible space to occupy.”⁣ ⁣ Many, many people? But I thought it was just me. And that's why I kept my ever-increasing struggle to myself for so many years. I thought everyone else either had a Problem-with-a-capital-P or drank "normally." I thought I was the only weak-ass dumdum for whom wine was not the glorious treat I had been led to believe it was.⁣ ⁣ 550 days ago, I left the gray area behind for good. I have only looked back to see how far I've come, and to give myself a little jolt of pride whenever I need it. My alcohol freedom is there for me now in a way that alcohol never was. On a crappy day, I remind myself that I am in fact quite brave, and I can in fact get through tough stuff. On a wonderful day, I remind myself how amazing it is to be able to absorb every perfectly imperfect moment. I am numb to neither the crap nor the wonder. I am open and receptive to it all, and simply damn grateful to be right here 😊⁣ #dryjanuary #afday550 #soberaf #jomo #ichoosenobooze #sobermom #aflife #alcoholfree #sober #soberlife #grayareadrinking #sobermovement

Three consecutive non-hungover New Year’s days. There was once a time where I did not believe I would be capable of that - or even want it - and yet here I am: alcohol-free at the outset of a new decade. And it feels good 😊⁣ ⁣ That doesn’t mean I wasn’t hurting today though. Last night my husband and I split two pints of Ben & Jerry’s as a treat/throwback to our eating habits of the mid-2010s 😬 This indulgence (and damn it did taste good) was also the grand finale of my holiday sugar over-consumption. I woke in the middle of the night with the dreaded sugar sweats - not as bad as booze sweats but still unpleasant. Yikes.⁣ ⁣ So here is my plan. For this Dry January, I’ll be supporting all my friends IRL and on social media (here + Peloton Sober Squad on FB + Connect) who are choosing to go sans booze (of course I’ll be right there with you). My personal challenge is to go sans added sugar.*⁣ ⁣ With a new year and decade upon us and my 40th birthday on the horizon, I am ready to take on this challenge - even if I’m a bit embarrassed to admit just how hard it will be for me, how dependent I am on sugar, and how I cannot imagine how I will ever succeed in breaking my sugar habit. ⁣ ⁣ But that’s exactly what I thought about alcohol. ⁣ ⁣ I think I might be stronger than I think 🤔⁣ ⁣ Anyone else going sugar-free this month? Let me know!⁣ ⁣ *With the possible exception of a really nice lunch date tomorrow with my hubby where I reserve the right to order dessert but this will be the only transgression of the month.⁣ ⁣ #dryjanuary #AFday546 #soberaf #jomo #ichoosenobooze #winemom #sahm #mom #momlife #momblogger #instamom #wwmoms #healthy #alcoholfree #sober #soberlife #grayareadrinking #sobermovement #sobermom #sobermommovement #pelotonsobersquad #afsquad #fitmom

Started the end of the year and decade with an awesome and literally LIT New Year’s Kickin’ Eve class co-hosted by the lovely @maria_mule525 🎉 Totally inspired by my @westchestermma family and I cannot wait to work even harder in 2020 to improve my teaching, work on my skills, and build strength 💪 ⁣ ⁣ Came home in time to countdown to Noon Year’s Eve with my kiddos 🥳 Spending the afternoon with them 🎳 and tonight on the couch with my hubby watching a movie and eating all the things. ⁣ ⁣ Tomorrow, the resolutions kick in and #DryJanuary kicks off. Today, I resolve to stay present with my family, soaking in the end of this very pivotal decade in which I became a mom and my life pivoted in the best possible way. ⁣ ⁣ 2010s, I am grateful for the roller coaster ride. ⁣2020s, I’m ready for you. ⁣ #HappyNewYear, all! 🎉🥰🙌⁣ #drydecember #AFday545 #soberaf #jomo #ichoosenobooze #winemom #sahm #mom #momlife #momblogger #instamom #wwmoms #healthy #alcoholfree #sober #soberlife #grayareadrinking #sobermovement #sobermom #sobermommovement #pelotonsobersquad #afsquad #fitmom #newyearseve #2020

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My Drinking Non-Negotiables

I will not drink to relieve boredom.
I will not drink to relieve stress.
I will not be drunk in front of my children.
I will not drink when I am alone; or alone with my children during the witching hour or any hour.
I will not drink when I have to drive.
I will not drink when I am traveling alone.
I will always put my children, my husband and my safety before alcohol.

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