Austin WeddingDay Articles of Interest

Weight Loss for the Bride

Almost every bride wants to lose a few pounds before her big day. But when you’re planning a wedding, weight loss can seem next to impossible. All your free time is spent working on the wedding, you’re sampling all sorts of decadent foods for the reception and you’re dealing with tons of stress.

Don’t despair. Losing weight doesn’t have to be a losing proposition. In fact, weight loss can even be easier when you’re planning a wedding than it would be otherwise. Whether it’s five pounds or fifty-five pounds you’re after, start early enough and you can get in great shape for your wedding day and beyond.

Getting started

It’s so much harder to get started exercising than it is to continue. If you don’t normally exercise, keep this in mind. Those first steps you take, those first few times you go out running or biking, those first yoga classes will be the most difficult ones you ever do. If you can get through the first steps, it’s all downhill from there.

After a month or two of regular exercise, your body starts to get addicted to it. This is an example of a positive addiction, not like addictions to cigarettes or alcohol. This is an addiction that you want to cultivate. Once you’re addicted to exercise, you just won’t feel right if you miss a day. When you do get out there and move your body, it’ll feel amazing both during and after your workout.

So if starting is the hardest part, where do you begin? You won’t get anywhere without the proper motivation to exercise. But as a bride-to-be, you’ve already got a ready-made source of motivation: You want to look good on your wedding day, both for your guests and new husband, and because you’ll be looking at the photos for the rest of your life. Don’t accept that you’ll always be in the shape you’re currently in. You can change your body. Keep imagining how you want to look on your wedding day, and use the strong motivating factor of your wedding to help you take those first steps and say no to empty calories.

Set a realistic goal

Another good thing about losing weight for your wedding is that you have a specific date in mind to have accomplished your goal. This is good because it will help you to stay on track.

On average, a healthy amount of weight loss is one to two pounds a week for women. This doesn’t sound like much, but remember that extra fat is something of a security blanket for your body – if we encounter a food shortage, this supply could keep us alive. If you lose weight too quickly, then, your body will panic that its supplies are running out, and will slow your metabolism down. This means that every calorie you eat will be even harder to burn than before.

Figure out what a healthy weight would be for a woman of your height. There are Internet sites that can help you with this, or if you’re a member of a gym, you may be able to get a free assessment from a personal trainer. From there, look at how soon your wedding date is and determine a realistic amount of weight you’d like to lose, keeping in mind that you should stick to one to two pounds a week. It’s important to start early. Aim to reach your goal weight by a month before your wedding so that you have time for final dress alterations. Make a calendar showing exactly where you’d like to be each week, and keep track of whether you’ve accomplished your week’s goal.

Eat!

The good news when it comes to weight loss is that you don’t have to starve yourself. In fact, you’ll find that weight loss is so much easier if you keep eating – and your body will thank you for the nutrients.

The only catch is that you have to eat the right things. In terms of how much they fill you up, a calorie is not always the same however it’s served. For instance, one full-sized carrot contains the same number of calories as two teaspoons of sugar, but which one do you think fills you up more?

In general, try to avoid drinking your calories. Fruit juice, sugary coffees, sodas and alcohol are high in calories but won’t leave you feeling full. On the other hand, foods high in water content, such as fruits, vegetables and broth-based soups, often will leave you full on few calories. For this reason, choose fresh rather than dried fruits and vegetables.

Foods high in protein also fill you up quickly. Choose lean beef, chicken, fish, low-fat cheese, lentils or beans. Accompany this with complex carbohydrates, such as whole-grain bread, and fresh produce.

It’s hard to eat right when you’re trying to choose a wedding cake and a menu for your reception. But don’t think that you can’t participate in this selection just because you’re trying to lose weight. Just keep in mind that you’ll be eating more calorie-heavy foods on the days you’re sampling, and compensate by eating a salad full of ­veggies and lean protein for dinner, and spend some extra time moving during the day. In fact, this is important any time: If you eat something unhealthy one day, don’t give up. Just pick back up with your healthy eating habits and exercise as soon as you can and you’ll be back on track.

Exercising right

High-intensity exercises like spinning can burn as many as 800 calories per hour, while low- to moderate-intensity exercises like walking only burn around 250 calories per hour. Logically, then, the high-intensity exercises are better for weight loss, right?

Actually, no. While high-intensity exercise is very important for cardiovascular health, low- to moderate-intensity exercise is better for helping you to lose and keep off excess weight. The reason for this is that high-intensity exercise uses easily available energy in your body that then needs to be replenished when you’re done exercising, while low-intensity exercise actually pulls energy from your fat stores. In other words, if you go for a brisk run that keeps your heart rate up the whole time, you’ll be so hungry when you’re done that you’re likely to eat back all the calories you burned. On the other hand, if you go for an hour-long walk, you’ll be able to satisfy your hunger with a light snack or your normal dinner, and wind up with a calorie deficit for the day.

This is good news for brides because it means you can work on your wedding at the same time as you’re getting some exercise. You’re able to walk and talk in a way that you couldn’t do while sweating through a kick-boxing class. Instead of meeting for coffee to talk about wedding arrangements, go for a walk around the neighborhood to talk things over. If it’s possible, try to walk or ride a bike to your appointments with your caterer, florist or wedding coordinator. Look through wedding magazines while you’re on the elliptical machine at the gym. Or take dance classes in preparation for your first dance at the wedding reception.

Don’t shy away from weight-lifting, either. Many women are afraid that lifting weights will bulk them up, but because women are built differently from men, lifting weights will give you muscle definition without extra bulk. Lifting weights may cause you to gain weight at first as your muscles grow, so don’t worry if you’re not making your weight-loss goals when you start lifting. Soon, though, you’ll see that weight-lifting will help you to lose weight quickly, and because muscles take extra calories to maintain, you’ll lose more weight without even doing anything if you have a few extra pounds of muscle. Try a weight-lifting class if you’re not sure what to do, as lifting the wrong way can cause serious injury.

If you’re creative about it, just about anything can be weight-lifting: carrying wedding presents up the stairs or lifting up heavy floral arrangements ... you can even lift and lower the phone book while you’re on the phone with your vendors.

Don’t stress

With so much on your shoulders when you’re planning a wedding, it’s natural that you’re more stressed out than normal. Many people turn to food to comfort themselves during these times, but exercise is one of the best stress-fighting techniques there is.

If you can retrain yourself to think of exercise as stress-reduction instead of another item to squeeze onto the to-do list, you’ll wind up enjoying it more and probably doing more of it. And be creative – any sort of movement burns calories and helps you to de-stress, not just the activities we commonly think of as exercise. For instance, gardening is a great way to keep your body moving. Even walking around potential wedding venues will contribute to your weight loss and stress relief.

Fit into your wedding dress

You’ve found the perfect dress and you want to get it fitted to your body, but you’re not sure what size you’ll be when the day comes. This can be a big problem if you don’t get it right.

Don’t worry, though. Weight loss is common among brides, so dress shops and tailors are used to dealing with this issue. Choose the dress you want ahead of time, but talk to your dress shop about the latest date you can order it and still receive it on time for your fittings. When you do put in your order, order the dress to fit you as you are. The dress can always be taken in if you lose more weight, but can’t be expanded if you don’t lose those last few pounds you’re hoping to get rid of.

Make sure that you schedule more than one dress fitting. Let the dress shop know that you’re losing weight so that they can take this into consideration when making your fittings schedule. If you’ve stuck to your weight loss plan and reached your goal weight by a month before your wedding, you should have no problems with your dress.

Beyond your wedding day

The motivation to look good on your wedding day can be a powerful factor to get you moving. But what happens after your wedding is over? Unfortunately, many brides who lose weight for their weddings aren’t able to keep the weight off after the big day.

This is why you need to find other motivators to keep you going. Pay attention to how great you feel when your body is in good shape and when you’ve got a post-exercise endorphin rush flooding your system. Try to incorporate the changes you made for wedding weight loss into your everyday lifestyle.

When you get married, you start a whole new chapter in your life. This is a perfect time to make other changes to your life too – the perfect time to become who you’ve always wanted to be. Make your wedding a jumping-off point for the new you. Even if you started losing weight so that you’d look good, keep up the healthy lifestyle so that you and your husband can spend many happy, healthy years together.