Nomend ad: What my 79-year-old home-ec teacher wrote in my yearbook

At my 40-year high school reunion, they put my "then and now" photos on a screen 8 feet tall. In 1986 I was voted Most Athletic. In 2026 I walk 4 miles a day and eat less than I did at 18, and my stomach still came into the room before I did. ======== I'm Terri. I'm 58, and I live in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I've worked the front desk at a vet clinic for 17 years. Married 31 years to Rick. Rick says I tell Facebook too much. So: hi, Rick. Class of 1986. I was voted Most Athletic. I ran the 800 in 2:19, and I will tell you that number at any party whether you ask or not. ======== This October was our 40-year reunion. A Saturday night, in a hotel banquet room off I-69. $65 a ticket, cash bar, chicken or the pasta. I couldn't skip it, because I was on the planning committee. I made the name tags myself. Every name tag had that person's senior photo printed on it. That was my idea. I would like to go back in time and have a word with that woman. ======== 212 graduates. 118 RSVPs. Rick and I were at round table 9, right by the dessert table, which I'll be honest was not an accident. The committee's big idea was a "Then & Now" slideshow. Your senior photo on the left. On the right, a "now" photo, snapped on an iPad at the check-in table as you walked in. Lisa ran the iPad. Lisa has been my best friend since 1983. She snapped 118 people while they hugged and hunted for their name tags. I was on the other side of that table, handing the name tags out. So I never saw which picture she took of me. ======== 8:15pm. The lights went down. The screen was 8 feet tall. Alphabetical order, and Marsh is in the middle, so I had plenty of time to laugh at everybody else first. Then there I was. On the left, 1986 Terri, in a track singlet, with "MOST ATHLETIC" under her in gold letters. On the right, 2026 Terri. Caught from the side, leaning over the check-in table. My stomach out over my slacks like a shelf. My stomach came into the room before I did. 118 classmates, plus their husbands and wives, looked at it for about six seconds. I know, because I counted. ======== Nobody laughed. That's the part I keep coming back to. Somebody whistled at the next slide, Doug Pfeiffer, who still has all his hair. I clapped for Doug. Under the table, Rick squeezed my knee. I smiled until the lights came up. Then I told Rick I needed some air. ======== Rick had given me the car keys earlier, so I could grab my cardigan, because the banquet room was freezing. So I went out to the parking lot and sat in the driver's seat with the heater on high. And I unbuttoned my slacks. I sat like that for 25 minutes, watching the headlights go by on I-69. That afternoon, upstairs in our hotel room, I'd tried on 6 tops. They were still in a pile on the bed. I'd picked the tunic, the long flowy one. Because it hides it. It didn't hide it. And I already knew what happened in the morning. The slideshow would go up on the class Facebook group. I know, because that was my idea too. (It went up at 9:40 the next morning.) (214 likes.) (I untagged myself, but I can't delete it, because it's Lisa's post.) ======== You're probably wondering why I didn't just ask Lisa to cut my slide. I didn't know which photo she'd taken. I didn't know there was anything to cut until it was 8 feet tall. And why didn't I just go home? Rick drove, and I'm on the committee, which means I'm on clean-up. Somebody has to take down 40 balloons. So I sat there and did the math. ======== I didn't get this stomach on the couch. Since I turned 51, every pound has gone to my middle. Only my middle. I walk 4 miles a day with our beagle, Biscuit. I still run three mornings a week. I eat about 1,300 calories a day. That's less than I ate at 18. Three doctors in seven years have told me the same thing. "Eat less, move more." I ran the 800 in 2:19. I know how to move more. And I'd tried everything else, too. ❌ A neoprene waist trainer I couldn't sit down in, $59. ❌ Shapewear that rolled down to my hips by lunch, $42. ❌ A "menopause belly" supplement, $39 a bottle, three bottles. ❌ Noom, $209. ❌ New running shoes, $165, because I thought maybe it was the shoes. ❌ One month of Ozempic, $400, because insurance wouldn't cover it and I couldn't keep paying that. ❌ A CoolSculpting consult, quoted $3,200, and I walked out before the lady finished her sentence. About $1,000 out of my own pocket. Before the $3,200 I didn't spend. And my stomach still came into the room before I did. So I buttoned up as best I could, and I went back inside. ======== I should tell you about Mrs. K. Mrs. Kowalski, to the school board. Mrs. K, to everybody who ever took home-ec with her. She's 79. She taught home-ec for 34 years, and the committee invited her as our guest of honour. She taught me to sew in 1984. I'd noticed her earlier, before the slideshow. She took exactly two cookies from the dessert table and saved them for after dinner. She wore a wool dress with a belt. She sat up very straight at table 1, like the chair had done something to deserve it. And when the bartender offered her coffee, she said, "Just hot water, please." I remember thinking, that woman has rules. ======== When I came back in from the parking lot, she was at the coat check. The two chairs there were the only quiet spot in the building. She had her cup of hot water. She looked me up and down. "Terri Marsh," she said. "You still hem your pants too short." I laughed, which surprised me. Then she said, quieter, "I saw your slide." ======== In 1984, the home-ec room was where the girls went to cry. You'd walk in red-faced, and Mrs. K would hand you a seam ripper and a skirt somebody had botched. "Fix this," she'd say, and you'd pick out stitches until you could breathe again. She never told anybody. I told her everything in 1984. So I sat down in the other chair, and I told her everything again. ======== The 6 tops on the hotel bed. The blouses I wear at the clinic, and how they gape between the buttons the second I sit down at the desk. How I unbutton my slacks in the car on the way home from work, every single day. How I stand sideways in every photo, because my good side is the back. How I can eat 1,300 calories and still be bloated like a beach ball by supper. She listened with both hands around her cup. She didn't say "It's just menopause." She didn't say "Eat less." She said, "I went through that." "In my sixties." ======== "Went through?" I said. "Past tense, dear." And she tapped the belt on her wool dress. A belt. Cinched. At a waist. At 79. I'd been looking at that woman all night, and I hadn't put it together. ======== Then she asked me the strangest question. "What happens to brown sugar when you leave the bag open?" "It goes hard as a brick," I said. "And if you use less of it, does the brick go soft?" "No." "And if you chip at it with a spoon all day?" "You get a sore wrist and a little pile of sugar." "That's your running," she said. "And using less of it, that's your dieting." ======== Then she explained it like she used to explain why your bread didn't rise. After menopause, your estrogen drops. When it does, the fat settles deep, behind the stomach wall. And it sets there, hard, like that brick. Diet can't reach it. Running can't reach it. And when you eat less, your body gets nervous and holds on even harder. At the same time, your collagen drops too. So the skin on top goes loose, and it folds over your waistband. A hard brick underneath, a soft bag on top. "You've been chipping at a brick with a spoon for seven years, Terri," she said. "Of course your wrist hurts." ======== "So what do you do with the brick?" I asked. She smiled like I'd finally asked the right question in class. "Every girl in my class knew this one." "You put a slice of bread in the bag overnight." "In the morning, it's soft." "Then it pours." ======== Her slice of bread, she said, is light. Two kinds. Red light, 660 nanometers, for the skin on top. And near-infrared, 850, which goes deep, behind the wall. "The light opens the cells up," she said, "and what's stored in there comes out." "Like squeezing water out of a sponge." "Then you take a 10-minute walk, and the walk carries it away." ======== I asked her how a home-ec teacher knows about nanometers. "My daughter-in-law," she said. Her daughter-in-law runs a med spa in Indianapolis. They charge $200 and up a session for those exact two lights. Med spas have been doing it since 2010. "Well, I wasn't paying $200 to sit under a lamp," Mrs. K said. So she bought a belt with both lights in it, for home. 20 minutes a day, sitting down. ======== I told her it sounded too good to be true. I'd heard "too good to be true" about $1,000 worth of times. Her daughter-in-law had shown her a double-blind trial with postmenopausal women, using the same 660 and 850. 72% had a visible decrease in inches. 89% had a firmer stomach. And nobody changed their diet or their exercise. "Now, I'm not a doctor," she said. "I taught girls to bake for 34 years." ======== "The first two weeks, I was just less puffy," she said. "Week 4, I belted a dress again." "Week 8, the ladies at church started asking." She patted the belt. "They're still asking." ======== The committee had brought a box of old yearbooks for everyone to sign. I'd brought mine, the 1986 one, with the cracked spine. Mrs. K held out her hand for it. She flipped straight to the inside back cover, like she knew exactly where she'd be. And there it was, in faded blue ballpoint. "Terri, keep your seams straight! — Mrs. K" She took a pen out of her purse and wrote underneath it, in the same handwriting, just a little shakier. "2026: LumaLean Ultra." "Red 660 + infrared 850." "20 min sitting." "Walk 10 after." She blew on the ink and handed it back. Then she talked about normal things. Her cat, Pierogi, who is 16 and hates her. The new cafeteria, which she says looks like an airport. And who got fat. (The boys, all of the boys, and she was delighted.) Then Rick came over with our coats on his arm, and Mrs. K told him he was a lucky man. "Yes, ma'am," he said. ======== 10:52pm. Clean-up was done, all 40 balloons. Rick was carrying the slideshow laptop out to Lisa's car. I was back in the driver's seat with the heater on, waiting for him. Slacks unbuttoned again. The yearbook was open on the steering wheel, to the inside back cover. Two notes, 40 years apart, in the same handwriting. I read them three times. Then I ordered it on my phone, right there in the hotel parking lot. Rick opened the door and looked at the yearbook, then at me. "Mrs. K?" he said. "Mrs. K," I said. ======== Here's how it actually went. Not the fairy-tale version. Week 1: Nothing. It just felt warm. I wore it for 20 minutes during the evening news, then took Biscuit around the block for 10. The belt glows red through my T-shirt, so Rick started calling me "E.T." He thinks he's very funny. Week 2: I wasn't bloated after supper. Same supper, same 1,300 calories. I noticed because I didn't change into sweatpants at 7pm. Week 3: My slacks buttoned after supper. Week 4: I sat down at the clinic desk, and my blouse didn't gape. I stood up and sat back down twice to make sure. Week 6: 2.5 inches down at my navel. Same tape, same spot, every two weeks. That week was the clinic's staff photo. I stood facing the camera. Arms down. Front side. ======== I don't look like 1986. My stomach is softer than it was before the kids, and it's going to stay that way. It took weeks, not days. And results vary. Mrs. K's weren't mine, and mine won't be yours. But I don't stand sideways anymore. ======== Nobody paid me to write this. Rick says I tell Facebook too much, and he's right. ======== So here's the part Mrs. K would make me write on the board. Dieting is using less of the brick. Running is chipping at it with a spoon. After menopause, neither one makes it soft. LumaLean is the slice of bread. The red light (660nm) works on the skin on top. The near-infrared (850nm) reaches deep, behind the wall. And the 10-minute walk afterward takes it away. 20 minutes a day, sitting down. No needles, no surgery, nothing to swallow. It's $149.95, which is less than I paid Noom to tell me to eat less. And you get 60 days to try it, or your money back. 👉 Try LumaLean Ultra Risk-Free for 60 Days: https://trynomend.com/pages/lumalean-listicle-bf1 💝 60-Day Money-Back Guarantee 🔴 660nm Red + 850nm Near-Infrared (TriCore™) 🛋️ 20 Minutes a Day, Sitting Down 💉 No Needles, No Surgery, Nothing to Swallow 🛡️ 1-Year Warranty + Free Extension Strap ⭐ Trusted by Over 30,000 Women ======== ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "I was sceptical... I have been using it for four weeks... I can see a real difference." — Susan G. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "I've lost 3 inches from my waist in 2 months and feel so much more confident in my clothes." — Megan N. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "My loose belly skin is finally tightening after just 3 weeks. My husband noticed before I even told him!" — Christina ======== P.S. Last week I sent Lisa a new "now" photo for the class Facebook group. Facing the camera. Belt on. Lisa posted it right under the old slide. And I mailed Mrs. K a bag of brown sugar with a slice of bread in it. No note. She'll know. 👉 https://trynomend.com/pages/lumalean-listicle-bf1 ======== For every woman who stands sideways in every photo... For every woman who's been told to "eat less, move more"... You're not doing it wrong. You've just been chipping at a brick with a spoon.