My Wedding Anti-Diet

Color me clueless, but I lived nearly two decades of my life not even realizing dieting for one's wedding was a thing. I distinctly remember when I realized wedding diets existed in the world at large and how terrible this discovery felt. It felt like the time I realized "sophomore" was not spelled "sophmore"—an error I made consistently for countless years (including "sophmore" year of high school). (To this day, I take spelling much more seriously than dieting, you should too.)

I was in college, and the T.V. blared Royal Wedding coverage (but of course). The news people were discussing....wait for it...Kate Middleton's waistline. What else?

They were showing beautiful pictures of Kate six months ago and beautiful pictures of present day Kate and comparing her waist size in the pictures. Because really? This woman is about to officially become royalty so let's discuss her body at length, shall we? What else could we possibly cover about her? Oh yes, her clothes. Well, we'll cover her wardrobe extensively in the next segment and the next segment and the next segment, don't you worry.

So, one woman says: "I must say, she just looks so much thinner. I'm worried she's starving herself for the wedding."

Second woman responds: "Well, I say, let her do what she wants with her body. It's the most important day of her life. Of course she'd want to be in the best shape possible!"

And this is when I had my miserable epiphany. I can't remember my exact position but it's safe to assume I was sprawled out on the couch inhaling Sour Patch Kids. And I thought, eloquently:

Wait, what? People diet for weddings? Shit.

Because, as an athlete, when I asked myself the question: When should one be in the best shape of one's life? The following answers came to the forefront of my mind:

*When one's playing in the NCAA Tournament

*When one's doing an Iron Man

*When one's climbing Mount Everest

*When one's swimming the English Channel

*When one's competing in the Olympics

These, to me, make sense. You should probably (at least attempt) to be in (somewhere near) the best shape of your life when you're participating in a vigorous athletic event. But when one's getting married? When you've found a person who wants to share the rest of your life with you, until death due you part? Why?  Had the stars ever been more misaligned?

I suppose (I admit this is likely an uncommon perspective), for the first 20 years of life I never associated being in shape with appearance. I mean you either can or can't run a mile in under 6 minutes and 30 seconds and it didn't matter how thin you are, if you didn't make your mile time you were benched until you did (this actually happened for my college  basketball team, some of the thinnest girls on the team didn't pass the test).

Of course, flash forward seven years, and now I'm actually planning a wedding and less blissfully naive about society's body standards, and I totally get it. You're going to have to wear a dress in front of tons of people, some of which you haven't seen in years. You're going to be professionally photographed for hours on end. Those photos will be broadcast all over social media, so even friends and friends of friends you purposefully didn't invite will be able to judge how you look and say passive aggressive comments like, "Well she looks nice but that dress just isn't for me, you know?"

So, when we were dress shopping, I had another epiphany to counteract my miserable epiphany of yore: I'm going to buy a dress that fits me. (Note: with my really short guest list, I already had not invited any passive-aggressive dress judgers to my wedding.) Furthermore, being what Cosmo calls "pear-shaped"—I tried on a few tight-all-the-way-down numbers, thought "nope," and told the dress attendant that I'm going to need to buy a dress that "goes out." And, then, the whole dress shopping experience became much easier and more enjoyable.

And therefore, my friends, I present to you the ultimate wedding (anti)diet: BUY A DRESS THAT FITS. THE END.

:)