For those of you who haven’t heard, I have to share with you the biggest news of my life up to this point… On October 10th, 2009 I will be marrying my best friend in the whole world! We are so excited and busily planning the big day.
And part of the planning involves dress shopping…which I was doing last night. Bridezilla happened to be trying on dresses in the fitting room adjacent to mine. It’s no secret that many brides try to lose weight to look their best for their wedding day, but apparently bridezilla has a lot of weight to lose. She’s planning on losing 30lbs by August, and she plans to do it by not eating anything all day but a granola bar and yelling at the fitting room attendant to burn calories. Really?!
While this poor girl didn’t know that she was giving nutritionista in the room next to her good material to write about, a lot of people identify with her. Starving yourself to lose a bunch of weight really quickly sounds morbidly unpleasant but somewhat successful in theory, only it actually is the worst possible way to lose weight. You see, when you don’t eat, your metabolism turns to mush and slows way the heck down. Then when you do finally decide to feed yourself a little junky granola bar, your body clings to every last calorie and stores it as fat for fear that you wont be giving it anything else to use for energy for the next 24 hours. When you start eating like a normal person again, you’ll gain weight rapidly because your metabolism has slowed down so much. Lose, lose.
I prefer win-win. Here’s how to win. If you want to lose weight, figure out what your BMR (basal metabolic rate) is here. That’s how many calories your body burns at rest, doing absolutely nothing. Then make sure that you are consuming slightly less than that many calories each day, or consume the same amount but increase your daily exercise. This way you’ll actually be eating more than a granola bar every day, and still lose weight healthfully! (Yelling does not count as exercise).
Maybe bridezilla’s stress level was exasperated by her lack of food and nutrients. See Eat to Beat Stress for more details about proper nutrition to combat stress.
Here comes the bride…
