Changing our Body Shape for the Wedding Day?

Weddings take a whole lot of planning. From the moment you and your partner get engaged, your minds are likely to turn to your big day. You’ll discuss what you want. You’ll discuss how you’d like events to proceed. You’ll discuss everything from your venue to your wedding photographer, guest list, the cake, table settings, music, entertainment and more. But for many of us, engagement and a wedding in the pipeline will kick start a process which results with weight loss looming over us. But why? Well, time and time again we’re told that our wedding will be the best day of our life. We want to look our best for the occasion and society constantly tells us that slim is beautiful. Now, slim is beautiful. But so are all other body shapes and sizes. Your weight on your wedding day shouldn’t be an arbitrary number pulled from a hat that the beauty industry is handing to us. It should be whatever weight you happen to be on your wedding day! You shouldn’t have to fight yourself for months to fit into a dress or suit that you purposefully bought in multiple sizes too small as a goal. You should just buy an outfit that fits you. Here’s some more information on the subject to ensure you stay both physically and mentally healthy in the lead up to your big day!

The Statistics

It’s not uncommon for multiple wedding party members to attempt to change their appearance in advance of the big day, so it’s not all too surprising that some research has been carried out into the area. A survey of 3,500 brides, grooms, bridesmaids, groomsmen and wedding guests found the following results. Aims

62.2% of brides stated that they wanted to lose weight before their wedding day
60.8% of grooms stated that they wanted to lose weight before their wedding day

Results

While 61.2% of brides lost some weight, only 18% hit their target goals
The average bride was 10.6 pounds away from target weight on their wedding day
84.7% of grooms lost weight in advance of the wedding, but just 31% hit their goal
The average groom was 8.2 pounds away from their target weight on the day

Reasoning When asked why they wanted to lose weight before the wedding, brides and grooms largely gave reasons along the lines of wanting to feel good about themselves and wanting to look good in dresses or suits. As you can see, attempting to lose weight for a wedding is pretty illogical. Not only do you put pressure on yourself for months in advance of the wedding (the average bride started dieting 4.4 months before their wedding, while the average groom started dieting 4.1 months before the big day), but results in such a short time frame are pretty unrealistic. This leads to feelings of disappointment or failure when weight has absolutely nothing to do with the ceremony at all! If you and your partner are getting married, you love one another for the people you are and don’t need to focus on image for the sake of an event and ceremony.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Wedding Weight Loss

If you have a high BMI and genuinely want to lose weight for your health and wellbeing, then this is fine. But don’t put pressure on yourself for the sake of your wedding day. Here are some do’s and don’ts to bear in mind if you are losing weight and happen to have a wedding scheduled in. Do’s

Keep your weight loss and fitness journey completely separate from your wedding. The two shouldn’t be related.
Maintain a healthy and balanced diet as advised by your doctor and nutritionist.

Don’ts

Don’t put an unrealistic time frame on your weight loss journey. Your journey shouldn’t be centred around your wedding with your wedding as a deadline.
Avoid fad diets in a bid to shed pounds in a short time period.
Don’t buy a dress or suit that is much too small as motivation to lose weight. As we have discussed above, people tend to set unrealistic goals and end up having to find a new dress when the date approaches.

Why You Shouldn’t Aim to Alter Your Appearance in Advance of Your Wedding Day

Of course, it’s fine to focus on getting healthier and fitter, but as we keep emphasising, you really shouldn’t try to alter your appearance in advance of your wedding day, solely for the purpose of looking a certain way for your wedding. Here are some reasons why!

You shouldn’t base your self perception on capitalist standards

We live in a world where beauty sells. We’re constantly fed unrealistic, highly edited and nigh on impossible to achieve standards of beauty by the media to profit the beauty industry. The worse we feel about ourselves, the more we will spend on makeup, beauty treatments, beauty procedures, weight loss products and more. Don’t base your self perception around values that are designed to make you feel bad and doubt yourself. Self-acceptance is key to happiness.

It Can Impact Your Mental Health

Setting a weight related goal in advance of your wedding day can cause you to overly obsess over your weight. People can quickly begin weighing themselves every day in a bid to track “progress” and can feel exhausted, worthless or frustrated if they don’t see the results they want. This is awful for your mental health and could result in dysmorphia or eating disorders if it is taken too far.

Dress and Suit Fittings Become Extremely Difficult

Our weight doesn’t tend to fluctuate all too much naturally – at least, not significantly enough to alter whether you can fit into a dress or suit or not. Maintaining a stable weight is much more appropriate in advance of a wedding. You can have a fitting and your ensemble will still be comfortable and fit when the big day does roll around.

You Already Have Enough to Worry About

Planning a wedding is stressful enough without having to factor in a strict diet and concerns about whether you will fit into your dress or suit or not. You don’t need to add calorie counting to your already endless list of tasks to complete in advance of the big day. Instead, focus your attention on more positive things like your flower arrangements, your cake design or how you’re going to decorate the venue. This will all prove much more rewarding.

You Need Your Energy

Of course, all of this planning work can be exhausting at the best of times. But if you aren’t getting enough food and your energy is running short due to diet changes, you can quickly find yourself feeling drained, sad or angry and experiencing a number of other common responses to chronic hunger. You need your energy to get all of this planning done around your usual day to day routine, which means good, healthy and regular meals and snacks!

It Can Result In Arguments

It’s easy to get touchy on subjects like food and weight when you’re dieting. You don’t want to find yourself arguing with your partner in advance of your wedding day over something like food. Simple comments like “I thought you weren’t eating that” when you break your diet could cause you to react defensively. Alternatively, you could hurt your partners’ feelings by inadvertently imposing some of your significant lifestyle changes on them. All in all, this is an area that could easily cause friction between you and the one you love.

Results Aren’t Likely to Last

If you are solely dieting for your wedding day, chances are that the results won’t last and all of the hard work and effort to reach a healthy weight will quickly be lost. If you were only losing weight for the day, the wedding itself is bound to have a host of delicious foods which you will indulge in and, followed by your honeymoon, this is likely to see you re-enter bad habits that you’ll no longer have motivation to stave off when you get back to day to day life. If you’re looking to achieve more genuine and long term health goals, planning your weight loss around your wedding really isn’t the best route to take!

Your Partner Loves You For Who You Are

If you’re desperate to lose weight before your wedding day, you need to ask yourself who you’re losing the weight for. If the answer is quite genuinely yourself – and not to make yourself happier through perceived social acceptance attached to slimness – then great. But otherwise, you may want to reconsider your plan. For one, your partner loves you as you are. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be getting married. If you’re not doing it for yourself or your partner, you’re probably doing it for strangers. Are social media likes really worth putting yourself through an unnecessary or rushed weight loss ordeal? The answer should be an obvious no. Changing your body shape really shouldn’t be a part of your wedding planning or prepping process. Your wedding photographer will take stunning pictures of you as you are. So, stop stressing and focus your efforts elsewhere!