I get it. A girl wants to look good on her wedding day, when 100ish pairs of eyes will be on her for 6ish hours and a photographer will be taking 1,000ish photos of her in all her bridal glory. But some brides are taking extreme dieting to a brand-new extreme, and it shocks me to my core that this is even real.
When I read about this in the New York Times, I decided I wasn’t going to comment and give any more attention to this stupid trend (not that I have anywhere near the amount of readers the NYT has). But then my friend, who’s getting married, himself, urged me to cover it. And as you all know, I aim to please.
So apparently the hottest diet craze among savvy, well-off ladies is spending $1,500 to walk around with feeding tubes up your nose for 10 days.
I know. “WTF?” was my reaction too.
True, the article covered a range of other crazy weight-loss strategies (including $1,000 for injections which doctors say are placebos), but this one struck me for obvious reasons.
-$1,500 is a lot of dough.
-People are more likely to point and stare at a woman with feeding tubes up her nose than one who’s 10 pounds overweight.
-The feeding tubes only supply you with 800 calories per day, which is about how much I have for dinner every few nights.
-Who the hell likes the sensation of plastic dangling out of your nostrils?
I lost about 10 pounds for my wedding. I probably could’ve stood to lose more (don’t worry; I gained it all back on my honeymoon), but four years later I’m happy with how I looked the day we got married (thanks, Spanx! Gratitude also goes to the kind but perhaps too touchy-feely old Jewish ladies at Magic Corsets in Forest Hills, NY).
Gratuitous wedding-day body pic alert!
Losing weight isn’t easy (I’m in the process of getting slimmer myself), but it’s not so hard that any of the alternatives that the Times suggests are worth it. Here’s what I did to lose a few before I got hitched:
-I drank as much water as I could stand all day.
-I cut out my favorite fatty and high-calorie foods, like bagels and doughnuts (it’s just a coincidence that these take the same shape), except on the rarest occasion.
-I took the stairs when it was a feasible option.
-I always ate half of what I ordered at restaurants and saved the other half to take home.
-If I thought I might be getting full, I’d stop eating, wait 20 minutes, and make the call if I was actually full (which was usually the case) or if I was still hungry–in which case, I’d eat some more.
-I avoided empty calories as much as temptation allowed, so I didn’t drink too much during my engagement (still don’t really).
Now imagine if I had actually exercised!
In closing, I think you’re a total psycho if you’d prefer to stop eating entirely for a day or more over eating more healthfully–just to fit in a wedding gown.
More About Weddings
What No One Admits About Wedding Dresses
How to Tell If a Friend Is Bridesmaid-Worthy
6 “Budget” Wedding Tips That Aren’t Worth It
Like Merital Bliss?
Become a fan on Facebook!
Follow Meredith on Twitter
Subscribe to Merital Bliss’s RSS feed
Get posts delivered straight to your inbox!
Like Meredith’s author page on Huffington Post
Photo by MaryBethWrites