We are pretty sure your groom to be thinks you are absolutely perfect the way you are, otherwise he wouldn’t have actually been willing to commit the rest of his life to you. However, in preparation for their big day, many brides resolve to embark on a more rigorous than usual diet and fitness regime to try to ensure they look their very best on their big day.
And you can’t really blame any bride to be that does. After all, they really will be in the spotlight, standing up in front of their family, friends and coworkers, not to mention those of their fiancé, many of whom they may never have met before. Ideally, we’d like to be able to say that all eyes will be on the bride and groom equally, but we all know that’s not true. In reality it is your bridal glory – the hair, the makeup, the dress that cost more than month’s salary – that everyone will be looking at, so the pressure to look the very best you can is understandable.
The problem comes when brides to be go about dieting in the wrong way and embark on some fad diet or worse still one of those crazy ‘juice only’ or ‘cabbage soup only’ diets as an attempted last minute fix. A bride to be has enough stress in her life; she doesn’t need diet induced illness and fatigue to add to it.
So with this in mind here are our Top 10 Do’s & Don’ts About Losing Weight Before Your Wedding Day:
Do: Be Realistic
No matter what some misguided media articles might suggest, you do not need to look like the clothes hanger your wedding dress is currently on in order to be beautiful on your big day. Set realistic, achievable weight loss goals right from the start and keep them sensible.
Don’t: Fall for the Fad Diet Hype
They pop up all the time; fad diets making extravagant claims that almost sound too good to be true. Take the juice diet for example. A juice only diet is often touted as a super quick way to lose weight. Which, if you can stick to it, it is. It is also a quick way to lose muscle, skin tone, energy and the actual ability to stand up for very long because you are so darned hungry. Plus as soon as you go ‘back to normal’ all of the weight will be back anyway.
Do: Add Some Exercise to Your Diet Plan
What you eat is obviously very important when ‘shedding for the wedding’ but diet changes alone will not result in long lasting weight loss. While you don’t have to plan on embarking on an Arnold Schwarzenegger like gym regime an extra walk in the park at lunchtime, an extra session of aerobics or a an investment in a good old fashioned bike to spin around the neighbourhood are all great ways to add some extra exercise to your daily routine at what is admittedly a very busy time.
Don’t: Start Skipping Breakfast
One of the ways that some think they will lose weight quicker is to begin skipping breakfast, if they ever ate it all. Missing out on that all important first meal of the day is a big mistake though for anyone, but especially for someone trying to lose weight.
By cutting out breakfast not only will you be more likely to snack on junk mid-morning because you’re hungry but you will be robbing yourself of the energy boost it provides. A healthy breakfast, preferably one with plenty of protein will kickstart you into you day with a bang and keep you feeling full until lunchtime.
Do: Enlist Some Support
As your wedding day approaches you probably have plenty of people around you who have been offering to help with the wedding planning. Rather than asking them to go dress shopping, or to help you make wedding favors ask them to be your morale support in your dieting efforts. They can, tell them, be especially helpful in helping you stick to an exercise plan by tagging along with you. And hey, then they will look even better at your wedding too.
Don’t: Believe All of the Food Hype You Read
Getting used to reading food labels in the supermarket to see what prepackaged items really contain is standard advice for those on a diet. But don’t think that just because something says that it is ‘low fat’ means that they are low calorie. In fact, many low fat foods are actually higher in sugar than their full fat alternatives to compensate for the lack of taste once fat is removed. Read the labels on all the food you purchase and then make a decision on what they actually contain, rather than what the flashy advertisements fail to tell you. And always shop with a list and stick to it, however tempting something else might look, something that will save you money as well as calories.
Do: Eat Regularly
Essentially, for everyone’s bodies food is fuel. If you are trying to lose weight you may be tempted to stretch out the times between meal times thinking that doing so is a good thing and that you should ignore the fact that your body is telling you it’s hungry now to avoid snacks.
In fact though study after study has proved that a meal plan that includes smaller meals and healthy snacks is more successful when it comes to weight loss and overall general health. When your body’s signals are ignored it may go into what is called starvation mode, but that involves breaking down muscle rather than fat as it will keep fat stores for ‘an emergency’, and muscle tone is not something you want to lose.
What counts as a healthy, weight loss friendly snack? Fruits, vegetable sticks, a handful of nuts or even a lightly buttered slice of wholewheat toast will help tide you over until mealtime without derailing your diet.
Don’t: Rely on Food for Comfort
Wedding planning is stressful stuff and sometimes it can all get to be a little bit too much. But snacking
to ease your problems is never the answer, especially not now. If you are tempted to reach for the ice-cream and sit down in front of a movie to get over the disappointment that the wedding photographer you wanted is booked up, or your cousin can’t make it for your big day after all, simply put, don’t.
Get up and take a walk instead, or call a friend for a good venting session. In fact, anything (within reason) to get your mind off the contents of that fridge..
Do: Consider Spot Treatments
To many brides to be’s dismay their big day approaches and even though they have worked very hard on their diet and have indeed dropped most of the weight they wanted to they still have one or two trouble spots that diet and exercise has simply not touched – often in the tummy area – that are still, in their minds , ruining the fit of their wedding dress.
This is where a series of electrotherapy treatments can be a great pre wedding present for a bride to be to treat herself to. Electrotherapy for weight reduction basically involves making use of an electric muscle stimulator, or slimming machine to target specific areas that diet and exercise have not (mainly because that is not really possible) and offer visible results in just a single session. And you can even use the treatment to help reduce the appearance of cellulite so that your honeymoon bikini look is every bit as stunning as your wedding day’s!