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Beyond the Wine Mom: Redefining Health in Midlife

Episode 133: Beyond the Wine Mom: Redefining Health in Midlife

Author and coach Jen Butler on gray area drinking, ditching diet culture, and rediscovering herself in midlife — unstuck, unshrunk, and unapologetic.

Show notes

In this episode of GynoCurious, Dr. Amy Novatt welcomes Jen Butler — best-selling author, speaker, and life and fitness coach — whose debut memoir, Mom Rediscovered: My Midlife Breakup with Drinking and Diet Culture, hit number one on Amazon in 2025. Jen shares her evolving definition of health, moving from a purely physical focus in her younger years to a much more holistic view that encompasses mental, emotional, and relational wellbeing. The two discuss how motherhood can profoundly disconnect women from their own bodies and sense of self, and how the roles we inhabit — mother, partner, daughter, professional — can both define and confine us.

At the heart of the conversation is Jen's personal journey with what she calls "gray area drinking" — the murky middle ground between a full-blown dependency and a completely uncomplicated relationship with alcohol. She describes how taking breaks from drinking became the first real boundary she set for herself, and how removing alcohol from her life cracked open a much larger excavation: confronting a lifetime of diet culture conditioning, a lost professional identity, and deep-seated body image struggles rooted in childhood. Jen also addresses the pressures unique to women around thinness, the dangers of normalizing weight-loss medications, and her own path to body neutrality — choosing strength and self-acceptance over the relentless pursuit of being smaller.

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Produced by Jennifer Hammoud and Matty Rosenberg @ Radio Free Rhiniecliff

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Jen Butler

Jen Butler

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