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I Wore a Continuous Glucose Monitor and Thought Wine Was the Experiment. Turns Out, I Was.

I genuinely thought this experiment was going to be boring. I figured I’d wear a Continuous Glucose Monitor for a couple of weeks, confirm a few things I already believed about food, maybe learn that eating cereal by itself wasn’t my brightest idea, and then move on with my life. That was the plan. Wine wasn’t even on my radar.

Like a lot of people, I’d convinced myself it was one of the “better” choices. Not exactly healthy, obviously, but definitely somewhere above soda, frozen margaritas, and those cocktails that taste more like candy than alcohol. A glass of wine with dinner felt normal. It felt like something adults did after a long day. You answer one last email, make dinner, finally sit down, pour a glass, and tell yourself, Okay, today’s officially over. If that sounds familiar, you’re definitely not the only one.

So one Friday night, I made what I thought was a pretty balanced dinner: grilled salmon, roasted vegetables, a little rice, and a glass of Pinot Noir. Honestly, I expected the rice to be the interesting part. Instead, I couldn’t stop staring at the graph on my phone. For almost an hour, my glucose barely moved. I actually laughed because I’d already started convincing myself that maybe everyone had been making alcohol sound worse than it really was. Maybe wine wasn’t that big of a deal. Maybe I’d finally found one wellness debate the internet had completely overblown.

Looking back, that was my first mistake. The funny thing about wearing a CGM is that it teaches you patience. If you check the graph too early, you’re basically reading the first chapter and pretending you know the ending. My graph looked great. My body? Not so much.

A couple of hours later, I wandered into the kitchen without really knowing why. I wasn’t starving. At least I didn’t think I was. I opened the pantry, closed it, opened the refrigerator, closed that too, and somehow ended up eating crackers straight out of the box. You know those moments when you’re halfway through a snack before you even realize you’ve made a decision? That was me. The whole time I kept thinking, Why am I still hungry? Dinner hadn’t been small. I’d eaten plenty of protein, vegetables, and healthy fat. On paper, there was absolutely no reason I should’ve been standing there negotiating with a sleeve of crackers.

When I looked back at my CGM, everything suddenly made a little more sense. My glucose had been drifting downward for a while. Nothing dangerous. Nothing dramatic. Just enough to explain why my brain had suddenly become obsessed with crunchy, salty carbs. That was the moment I stopped thinking this experiment was about wine and started realizing it was about something much bigger. It was about how often we mistake biology for a lack of willpower. Subscribe for more.