Wedding Dress Diet Lose Weight and Look Great on Your Wedding Day and Beyond

Introduction: Wedding Dress Woes Two weeks before her June 28th wedding, Jacy Johnson*, twenty-eight, went for the final fitting of her wedding dress. As she stood on a raised platform for the seamstress, Jacy was stunned to see that her stomach pooched out quite noticeably in the floor-length tube of a slip dress similar to the one worn by Carolyn Bessette Kennedy in her marriage to John F. Kennedy, Jr., a few years earlier. Jacy called this to the attention of her mother and the seamstress. The seamstress clucked her tongue sympathetically. "You can always wear shapewear," she said, heading off to find what our mothers used to call a girdle so that Jacy could see just how much the pooch could be masked. The "tummy terminator" nearly took Jacy's breath away with its industrial-strength Lycra and stays. Worse, the pooch was still apparent. Jacy's mother sighed heavily. "That's what you get for ordering a dress six months in advance." "Like I had a choice," Jacy snapped, glaring at her mother. But when she got home and stepped on the scale, she knew her mother had a point. She'd packed on several pounds. She couldn't lay the blame entirely on the glasses of champagne she'd been lifting at various premarriage celebrations with her friends, or the rich sugary pastries, cream soups, and chocolate-dipped strawberries she'd scarfed at the bridal showers. Having had to run around seeing to all the details of her huge, elaborate wedding during her lunch hours as a corporate communications specialist at a San Diego--based company, Jacy was forced to opt for fast-food lunches or quick stops at 7-Eleven for microwaved hot dogs and burritos. Well, Jacy vowed, this was war. She had two weeks to wage a pooch putsch. She did some research on the Internet, scanning the archives of women's magazines for diets that promised to help a reader doff ten pounds in two weeks or less. She settled on an extreme version of what's commonly known as the Dr. Atkins diet. She ate vast quantities of protein and some fat, but zero carbohydrates. For two weeks, Jacy downed nothing but meat and cheese. No carbs. No vegetables or fruit. Water weight poured off of her. She was constantly in the bathroom. Within eleven days, she'd lost eleven pounds. Two days before the wedding, however, she woke up with a painful, swollen tongue. It hurt to talk. It hurt to swallow. She visited her doctor. "It's either a virus that will go away in a few days, or your diet has been very poor," the doctor told her. When her big day arrived, Jacy's tongue still hurt. She could barely find the energy to walk down the aisle wearing her ornate, heavy headdress. She was exhausted. She and her new husband had to leave their expensive, carefully planned reception much earlier than they'd expected. On her Hawaiian honeymoon, Jacy indulged herself in breads, rice, pasta, potatoes-all the carbs she'd been craving. She felt bloated on the beach in Maui and refused to let her new husband take pictures of her in her bikini. Back on the mainland, she discovered she'd regained every bit of the weight she had struggled to lose . . . and then some. Jacy grins sheepishly when she relates this tale, then tells us a friend of hers--let's call her Lisa--can top it. Seems Lisa was so desperate to lose ten pounds in the week before her own wedding that she went to a seven-day, boot-camp-like "fasting" camp in which only water was served. By the fourth day, Lisa was so starving that she stole a packet of honey from the staff dining room and brushed her teeth with it, spitting it out so that the medical supervisors wouldn't catch on to her cheating. Professionally, we, the authors, have heard dozens of similar horror stories--Robyn, as a registered dietitian who has maintained a thriving nutrition counseling practice since 1985, and Jacqueline, a long-time freelance heFlipse, Robyn is the author of 'Wedding Dress Diet Lose Weight and Look Great on Your Wedding Day and Beyond' with ISBN 9780385499019 and ISBN 0385499019.