I Took 2 Drainage Drops. One Was Herbs In Alcohol. One Had Zeolite. Only One Slimmed My Ankles, Belly And Face.

1. Six weeks of herb drops and not one thing changed

I picked the ones with the most reviews: four herbs in alcohol, a full dropper twice a day. I held it under my tongue and choked down the taste. I finished the bottle and ordered another.

Six weeks in, the sock marks were still there at bedtime, my jeans still needed the bed to button, and my face in the morning looked the same.

I decided drainage drops were a scam and nearly gave up on the whole idea.

2. My body needed 3 jobs done. The herb drops did 1

Slimming down thick ankles and a soft middle takes three jobs. Get the fluid moving. Bind the buildup it's sitting around. Carry that buildup out of your body. The herb drops do the first job.

They push water around, you pee a little more, and by dinner it settles back where it was, because the buildup it was holding onto never left. Nothing in that bottle does the other two.

3. Then I read the back of the label

The herb bottle said proprietary blend, so I couldn't see how much of anything I was taking, and at the dose on the label it lasted about two weeks.

My coworker Jen had a different bottle on her desk and a different shape than she'd had in the spring. Her label said zeolite with humic and fulvic minerals. Ten drops in water, morning and evening.

One bottle for 60 days, and a 60-day guarantee.

4. Zeolite does the 2 jobs the herbs skipped

Zeolite is a volcanic mineral with a cage-shaped structure.

In the gut it binds the buildup your body has been packing into fat and carries it out when you go, and the fat and fluid that were holding it go with it.

Humic and fulvic minerals keep your gut moving so it leaves. That's the binding and the carrying out, the two jobs my herb drops never touched. I put the amber bottle in the trash and started Trace on a Monday.

5. Day 4, day 12, week 3, week 6

Day 4: more bathroom trips. After six weeks of nothing, it was the first sign anything was happening. Day 12: socks off at night and the marks gone inside a minute.

Week 3: ankle bones, and calves that looked like mine again.

Week 6: my jeans buttoned standing up, my belly was flat enough that my top hung straight, and my face at 7am was smaller than it had been in years. A patient asked me if I'd lost weight.

6. The part nobody warns you about

I had stopped wearing sandals. I had stopped wearing shorts. Without deciding to, I had become the one holding the camera at every birthday, the one who said you go ahead, I'll take it.

This summer I was in the middle of the family photo at my daughter's barbecue, in a sundress and sandals, and I didn't suck anything in.

7. Why the 60 days matter

My herb drops came with a 30-day guarantee. My first real change came on day 12 and my jeans in week 6. A 30-day window closes right when you would find out.

One bottle of Trace is 60 days, and so is the guarantee. If your ankles, belly and face aren't slimmer, email them and get every dollar back. Bottle opened or not, nothing to ship back.