Weddings – A Weighty Issue?
Weddings – all brides want to look their best, but the recent flurry of articles about weight gain after the ring is on the bride’s finger concerns me. And I did note there was no article or study on how many pounds the groom gained after saying I do! …
The Daily Telegraph recently had a little front page article, quoting an Australian study, saying that brides put on around 5lbs in weight after marriage….
It’s a bit of a non-issue really, as most brides go on a dietary regime of one sort or another up to a year in advance before the Big Day – a trawl through any Wedding Forum will reveal adverts for diets, exercise classes, food supplements, and for the weaker-willed, wedding ‘spanx’ hold it all in pants. So the 5lb weight gain is probably nothing more than going back to pre-wedding-diet weight!
What did tickle me though, was that the Daily Mail today has managed to double the Daily Telegraph’s Friday weight gain article to 10lbs and use this (in my opinion) awful headline:
Marriage makes you FAT: Brides gain up to 10lbs within the first six months of marriage
But what was even more astonishing – the Daily Mail on 3 December 2009 had an even more sensational headline, with a photo of a bride – shock, horror – actually eating!
One in five new brides puts on a stone and a half in weight after just a year of marriage
It gets worse. Just a couple of months before that article, they had this very sad headline, abut a bride who went on a crash diet before her wedding.
Bride-to-be died after losing 3st in 11 weeks on crash diet… eating just 530 calories a day
Many of us will remember the concern about the late Princess Diana’s weight loss leading up to her wedding – brides are particularly susceptible to pressure to be a ‘perfect size’ for their wedding day. It isn’t unknown for a bride to postpone her wedding simply because she had not reached her ideal weight.
That is not what a wedding is about! Your partner loves you for who you are when you met, not for some idealised image you may have in your head! Sensible eating, exercise and remembering that a marriage is about what is in your heart, not what the scales say!
