"By 51, I'd more or less accepted that this was just my body now. The hard belly that stuck out no matter what I ate. A guy at a work lunch asked when I was due — I laughed it off and cried in the car afterward.
It wasn't just how I looked. I was exhausted every day, foggy during work meetings, and there was this dull ache under my right ribs I'd stopped mentioning because every doctor said the same thing: 'enzymes are a little up, lose some weight, we'll recheck in six months.' I cut the sugar, I cut the carbs, I did the milk thistle, I even tried the beef liver capsules everyone online swears by. My ALT moved four points in a year. I caught myself googling 'why won't my belly go down' at 1 a.m. more than once. Some days it honestly felt pointless to even try.
I started Sculptique without much belief — more as a last thing before I gave up. Within two weeks, the heaviness after meals eased and the 2 p.m. crash quieted. By the second month, I pressed on my stomach the way I always did to feel how hard it had gotten — and it gave. It was soft. It was going down.
By month three I wasn't planning my outfits around hiding it anymore. My 12-week panel came back with my ALT and AST in normal range for the first time since my 30s. I didn't feel 'fixed,' exactly — I felt like myself again, which I hadn't in years, and that changed everything.
Honestly, the part that still gets me is the small stuff. Tucking a shirt in. Not dreading dinner. Getting through a whole afternoon without hitting a wall. I've been on it about six months now, and I keep going, because for the first time in a decade my body feels like it's working with me instead of against me."