Are you getting married soon? There’s nothing more exciting than that, and yet it’s common for brides-to-be to weigh down this wonderful time, so to speak, with crash diets and body-related anxiety. Do you really need to go on a diet to achieve that perfect wedding day look? Just because it’s a common practice doesn’t mean it’s necessary. The reality is that going on a pre-wedding diet may actually do more harm than good.

Ditch The Diet Anxiety

One of the major reasons you shouldn’t diet before your wedding is because dieting, especially the sort of deprivation-driven, crash diets favored by brides to be, tend to increase feelings of anxiety – and aren’t you already anxious enough? With so much to take care of, you’re already likely to find yourself struggling with stress. Add a diet to that and you’ll be hangry, anxious, and stressed all at once, which won’t make for a joyful big day. 

Emphasize Health

Another reason to skip that pre-wedding diet is because diets don’t work. Diets don’t work because they aren’t designed for the long-term and, as such, don’t consider sustainable lifestyle change. It’s one thing if you want to work on improving your health before your wedding, which is a great goal, but your health is not the same as the number on the scale. So, what would that look like?

There are a lot of great things you can do for your health before your wedding, like making sure you get enough sleep and staying hydrated. Another thing you can do is to start a new fitness routine that you’re motivated to stick to after your wedding. You might consider finding a fitness coaching program that fits with your lifestyle, joining a local gym, or trying a combination of different activities like yoga, swimming, and running. 

What you don’t want is a short-term, intense boot camp that will strain your body, but is only focused on slimming you down for your wedding, because you’ll inevitably gain that weight back.

Pick Other Areas Of Concern

Most brides who choose to crash diet before their weddings come to regret that decision. After all, they might look great in their pictures, but those pictures don’t look like them – meaning brides end up judging their post-wedding bodies against those images, in a cycle of dissatisfaction. 

If you’ve really got your eye on making some aesthetic improvements before your wedding, consider addressing concerns you can change in the long-term or that are just fun and indulgent. Want to get your teeth whitened, or even straightened? Now is a great time to do that. Go ahead and get eyelash extensions or a spray tan for the occasion. If you’re ever going to partake in these beauty rituals, now is the time. Pamper yourself and have fun, rather than dragging your body through a deprivation-driven diet and exercise regime just so you can be skinnier in your pictures.

Diets don’t work, but worse than that, they can actually be harmful, damaging your metabolism and leaving you tired and cranky, and that means they’re the last thing you need to add to your life as you prepare for your wedding. 

This is a wonderful and exciting time, to be sure, and short-term weight loss won’t make it any better – but it just might make the whole experience worse.