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The zipper stopped at the middle of my back and I sat down on the edge of the bed and didn't get up for 20 minutes. It was 4:18 on a Thursday afternoon in the second week of March. Easter was 17 days away. The dress was a soft coral linen I'd bought at the Belk in Haywood Mall in 2022 when I was a different size and a different woman. I had reached behind me with both hands the way you do, the way you've done a thousand times in your life. I felt the zipper catch. I tugged. It went an inch. It caught again. I tugged harder. I felt the fabric pull across my back and my upper arms and the seams along my sides. The zipper would not go past the middle of my spine. I tried to wiggle. I tried to suck in. I tried to roll my shoulders forward. It would not move. I stood there in front of the mirror in my bedroom and looked at myself. The dress half on. The zipper at my mid back. My face flushed. My eyes wet. I sat down on the edge of the bed in that dress with the zipper stuck and I sat there for a long time. The light through the bedroom window slid across the carpet and turned from white to a kind of gold and then to gray, and I just sat there. I'm Joanne. I'm 52 years old. I live in Greenville, South Carolina, off Wade Hampton, about a mile from the Bi-Lo I shop at on Mondays and Thursdays. I work the front desk at a dental practice on East North Street. I've been married to Doug for 28 years. We have one daughter, Hayley, who lives in Asheville and works for the parks service. We have two cats, both rescues, both named after country singers because Doug thought it would be funny in 2014 and it was, and now they're 11 years old and they don't care what we call them. I'm not a person who falls apart. I want you to understand that before I tell you the rest of this. I am the person other people fall apart in front of. I am the one who shows up at the funeral with the casserole and stays to do the dishes. I'm the one my sister calls when her marriage is bad. I'm the one my coworkers come to when they can't figure out the insurance billing software. I am the steady one. I have been the steady one my whole life. But I sat on the edge of my bed in that coral dress on a Thursday afternoon in March and I felt something inside me come unglued in a way I had not felt since my mother died in 2018. It wasn't the dress. The dress was the moment I realized I had been hungry for 3 years. I want to tell you what I mean by that, because I think a lot of women my age know exactly what I'm about to say and have never had anyone put words to it for them. I had not felt full after a meal in 3 years. I would eat lunch at my desk at 12:15. A turkey sandwich, an apple, sometimes a yogurt. The kind of lunch a 52 year old woman is supposed to eat. And by 1:30 I would be hungry again. Not just peckish. Hungry. The kind of hungry where you can hear your own stomach. The kind of hungry that makes you stand in front of the break room snack drawer and stare at it. I would go home at 5:30. I would eat dinner with Doug at 6:45. A real dinner. Pork chops, sweet potatoes, broccoli. A real plate of food. And by 8:15 I would be standing at the pantry door peeling open a sleeve of Ritz crackers because I felt like I hadn't eaten anything since lunch. I would wake up at 2:47 in the morning, sometimes 3:11, and I would lay there in the dark and feel my stomach growl. I would tell myself no. I would tell myself it was a habit. I would tell myself I'd just eaten 8 hours ago and there was no way I needed food. I would lose. I would get up. I would walk to the kitchen in my robe and I would eat a handful of cereal out of the box standing over the sink in the dark. I gained 34 pounds in 3 years. I tried to do everything you're supposed to do. I cut bread. I lost 4 pounds. I gained 6 pounds. I cut sugar. I lasted 11 days. I cut carbs. I felt like I was dying inside of a week. I tried intermittent fasting. I made it 4 days and I cried in the bathroom at work on day 5 because I couldn't think straight and my hands were shaking. I tried Weight Watchers. I tried walking 10,000 steps a day. I tried drinking water before every meal. I tried a meal replacement shake one of the hygienists at work told me about. Nothing worked. The hunger never went away. It just sat in me. All day. Every day. A low constant hum of need. I went to my doctor in January, 2 months before the dress. My doctor is a woman named Dr. Beauregard. She's good. She listens. She doesn't make you feel like an idiot. She drew blood. She took my pressure. She looked at my chart. She called me 4 days later. She said, Joanne, your fasting glucose is 108. Your A1c is 5.9. That's pre something. Your insulin is high. Your triglycerides are up. Your LDL is up. None of this is disease yet but it's all moving in a direction we don't want. She said the words I had been dreading. She said, you need to lose 20 pounds. I sat in my car in the parking lot of that medical building on Patewood Drive and I cried for 25 minutes. Because I had been trying to lose weight for 3 years. I had been trying so hard. And nobody, not one person, not one doctor, not one article, not one friend, had been able to explain to me why my body kept fighting me. Why the hunger never stopped. Why food I'd eaten 90 minutes ago did not seem to exist anymore. Why I would eat a real dinner and then stand at the pantry at 8:15 like a woman who hadn't seen food in 2 days. I drove home and I told Doug. Doug is a good man. He's 54. He sells commercial real estate. He's been beside me for 28 years. He hugged me and let me cry into his shirt and then he said, Jo, we'll figure it out. We always do. He believed it. I didn't. I went back to trying. I cut sugar again. I lost 3 pounds in 2 weeks. I gained 5 pounds back over Valentine's Day weekend because Doug had brought home a heart shaped cake from the Publix and I ate two pieces of it standing in the kitchen at 11:30 at night. The morning after Valentine's Day I stood on the scale and saw the number and I just sat down on the bathroom floor. That's where I was when the zipper stopped at my mid back. That's why I sat on the bed for 20 minutes in that dress. I want to tell you about my friend Lorraine now, because if she hadn't called me that Thursday night I don't know where I'd be. Lorraine is my oldest friend. We met in 1988 when we both worked at a Stein Mart in Spartanburg. She's 54 now. She lives in Anderson. We talk on the phone every Thursday at 7. Sometimes we text in between, but Thursday night at 7 is the call. We've been doing it for 31 years. She called me at 7:04 that night. I was still in the bedroom. I had peeled the dress off finally, around 5:30, and hung it back in the closet and put on sweatpants and a t shirt and gone to the kitchen and eaten 4 slices of leftover pizza standing at the counter. Then I'd gone back to the bedroom and laid down on top of the covers with my forearm over my eyes. I almost didn't answer the phone. I answered. Lorraine said, hey buddy. What's going on with you. You sound funny. I told her about the dress. I told her about the doctor. I told her about the 34 pounds. I told her about the hunger that never went away. I told her about standing at the pantry at 8:15. I told her about the cereal out of the box at 3 in the morning. I told her about the bathroom floor after Valentine's Day. I cried. Lorraine listened. She didn't interrupt. She didn't try to fix it. She let me get it all out. When I was done she said, Joanne. I want to tell you something. And I want you to listen all the way through before you say anything. She said, do you remember at Christmas, when you came over to my house, and you said I looked different. Like something had changed. I remembered. She had looked different. I had assumed she'd had her hair done. She said, it wasn't my hair. She told me she had been in the exact same spot 14 months earlier. The same hunger. The same can't lose weight no matter what. The same pre diabetic numbers. The same standing at the pantry. She'd gained 28 pounds. She'd tried everything I'd tried. Her doctor in Anderson had told her she'd be on metformin by summer if her numbers didn't move. She said, Jo, the thing nobody told me, the thing I'm about to tell you, is that the food wasn't the problem. I said what do you mean. She said, the pathway in your body that controls how fast food turns into sugar gets worn down over the years. Stress wears it down. Processed food wears it down. Hormones wear it down. Aging itself wears it down. And once it's worn down, the same meals that used to keep you full for 4 hours suddenly turn into a sugar spike and then a sugar crash, and the crash makes you hungry again 90 minutes after you ate. Doesn't matter how much you ate. Doesn't matter how healthy it was. Your body is on a roller coaster and the roller coaster is what's making you hungry. She said, that's why you can eat a real dinner and still be standing at the pantry at 8:15. That's why you wake up at 3 in the morning hungry. That's why the hunger never stops. The food is going through you like it's not even there because the system that's supposed to slow it down and keep you steady has been broken for a long time. I sat up on the bed. I said, Lorraine, that is exactly what's happening to me. She said I know it is. It happened to me. It happens to a lot of women our age. Nobody talks about it because the conversation gets pushed into either you need to lose weight or you have a thyroid problem, when really the issue is that your blood sugar regulation has been wobbling for years and you've been blaming yourself for something your body has been doing to you. I said, what did you do. She said, my niece in Charlotte sent me a bottle of something. It's an extract from pomegranate. A brand called Alevia. She works in the wellness space. She'd been on it for 8 months. She sent it to me and said Aunt Lorraine please just try it. She said, I took it. I took it for 60 days. The first thing that changed was the hunger. By week 2 the 8:15 pantry trips were gone. Like, gone. I didn't even think about it. By week 3 I slept through the night without waking up hungry. By week 6 I had lost 9 pounds without trying. She said, I haven't gotten up at 3 in the morning to eat cereal in 11 months. I'm down 22 pounds. My A1c is 5.4. My doctor took me off the metformin conversation completely. She said keep doing what you're doing. I said, Lorraine, why didn't you tell me this before. She was quiet for a second. She said, because I wanted to make sure it was real before I started telling people. Because I've been you. Because I've had friends tell me about a thing and I've felt patronized. Because I didn't want to be that person. She said, but Jo, when you started crying tonight, I knew I should have told you 4 months ago. I asked her to send me the link. She did. I sat in bed with my phone and I read about it. I read the website. I read the way the pomegranate extract works on the pathway Lorraine had just described to me. The compounds in it, something called punicalagins, that have been studied for how they support the pathway that helps control how fast carbs break down into sugar in your body. When that pathway is better supported, sugar enters your blood more gradually. The spikes ease. The crashes soften. The hunger after meals starts to settle. It was the first thing I had read in 3 years that explained what was actually happening to me. I ordered a bottle that night. 9:37 PM. Doug was already asleep. I sat in bed with my Visa card and I ordered it. The bottle came on the porch the following Tuesday. I started taking it the next morning with my coffee. 2 capsules at breakfast. I did not tell Doug. I did not tell anyone at work. I just took it. Here's what happened. Week 1. Nothing dramatic. I want to be honest with you. I was waiting for some big switch and it didn't come. But on day 5 I noticed I had not stood at the pantry at 8:15. I had sat in the living room with Doug watching a Carolina basketball game and at 9:30 we'd gone to bed and I had not eaten anything between dinner and bed. I noticed this in the morning. I didn't notice it at the time. Week 2. I made it through a Wednesday at work without going to the break room snack drawer. The whole day. I ate my turkey sandwich and my apple at 12:15 and I worked through to 5:00 and I did not stand at the snack drawer once. I drove home and I realized halfway down Wade Hampton that I had just done something I had not done in 3 years. Week 3. The 3 AM waking stopped. I slept through. I slept through Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, all the way to the alarm at 6:15. I lay in bed Thursday morning and I almost cried. I had not slept through the night in so long that I had forgotten what it felt like to wake up actually rested. Week 5. My pants fit looser. Not dramatically. But the navy slacks I wear to work, the ones I'd had to lay down on the bed to button in February, were buttoning standing up. I weighed myself. I was down 6 pounds. Week 7. Doug noticed. He came into the kitchen on a Saturday morning while I was making coffee and he stood in the doorway and looked at me for a long second. He said, Jo. You're different. I said different how. He said, I don't know. You're standing different. You look like you. You haven't looked like you in a while. I sat down at the kitchen table and told him everything. The dress. The doctor. Lorraine. The bottle. All of it. He listened. When I was done he reached across the table and took my hand. He said, why didn't you tell me you were that miserable. I said, because I was supposed to be the steady one. He said, Jo, you don't have to be the steady one with me. Week 9. I went back to Dr. Beauregard for my 3 month follow up. She took my blood. She took my pressure. She called me 3 days later. She said, Joanne, your fasting glucose is 92. Your A1c is 5.5. Your insulin is in normal range. Your triglycerides are down significantly. What have you been doing. I told her. She said, that lines up with some of the research I've read on pomegranate extract. Keep doing it. Month 4. I tried on the coral dress. It was a Sunday afternoon in early July. Easter was long past. I had not worn it on Easter. I had worn a wrap dress I'd had for years instead, and I had felt fine in it, and I had not thought about the coral dress for months. But that Sunday I was in the closet looking for a pair of sandals and I saw the coral dress hanging there and I pulled it out. I stepped into it. I pulled it up. I reached behind me and put my hand on the zipper. I closed my eyes. I pulled. It went up. Smooth. All the way up. To the top. I felt the little hook fasten at the back of my neck. I opened my eyes. I looked at myself in the mirror. The dress fit. Not loose. Not tight. It fit the way it had fit in 2022 when I bought it. I stood there and I cried in front of the mirror for a long time. Doug came to the doorway and saw me crying in that dress and he didn't say anything. He just stood there with his hand on the door frame and waited until I was done. When I turned around he said, you want to go to dinner tonight. We went to a place on Augusta Road that has white tablecloths. I wore the coral dress. I ordered the salmon. I ate it. I felt full when I was done. I did not want crackers when we got home. I did not get up at 3 AM. I slept through to 6:15 the next morning. I'm telling you all this because I know there are women out there exactly like I was 5 months ago. Women in their 40s and 50s and 60s who have been trying everything and nothing has worked. Women who feel hungry all the time and don't know why. Women who stand at the pantry at 8:15 every night and hate themselves for it. Women who wake up at 3 AM and eat cereal out of the box over the sink in the dark. Women whose doctors have told them their numbers are pre something and they need to lose weight, and they have been trying to lose weight, and their bodies will not cooperate. I want you to hear me say this. It is not because you have no willpower. It is not because you are broken. It is not because you don't try hard enough. It is because the pathway in your body that controls how fast food turns into sugar has been worn down for years, and until that pathway gets the support it needs, the roller coaster does not stop, and the hunger does not stop, and the weight does not move, and you keep blaming yourself for something your body has been doing to you the whole time. The brand is Alevia. The product is Alevia Pomegranate. They sell it direct from their website. It is a concentrated extract standardized for the punicalagins that actually do the work, not the watered down version Lorraine warned me about. She had done her research before she ever sent me the link. So had her niece in Charlotte. They run a 90 day money back guarantee. You take it for 90 days, and if you don't feel a difference, you ship the bottle back and they refund every penny. That is the deal. I do not know how they can afford to do that. But they do. If you have been standing at the pantry at 8:15 every night for 3 years. If you have been gaining weight you cannot explain. If you have been waking up at 3 AM hungry. If you have been sitting on the edge of your bed in a dress that used to fit. Give it a shot. 👉 alevia.com/pom/5 P.S. Lorraine and I drove down to Charleston for a long weekend last month. The first vacation we've taken just the two of us since 2019. We walked all over the city. We ate dinner every night at a real restaurant. I wore the coral dress to the place on King Street. Lorraine wore a blue one she'd bought in May after losing 24 pounds. We took a picture in front of the fountain at Marion Square and we both look like ourselves again. I have the picture on my phone. I look at it sometimes. P.P.S. My daughter Hayley came down from Asheville for a weekend in August. She walked into the kitchen Saturday morning and stopped in the doorway and said, Mom, you look really good. She is not a person who says things like that. I almost cried. We went hiking at Paris Mountain that afternoon. I made it to the top of the trail and I was not winded. Hayley said when we got back to the car, Mom, I thought I was going to have to slow down for you. I didn't have to slow down at all. P.P.P.S. If you order the bottle and it does not do anything for you, just ship it back inside the 90 days. The website tells you how. I've read it. The only thing it costs you is the willingness to stop blaming yourself for something that has not been your fault. 👉 alevia.com/pom/5