Wedding bells and weight loss
The body pressures of being a bride
Welcome back to Off the Scale.
Here, we ditch diet culture, question the latest nutrition fads, and, of course, throw away the scales.
As we head into the warmer months in the UK we also head into wedding season. Being in my late twenties, I have started to see my friends get married. With weddings comes the body pressures that people getting married, particularly brides experience. Today we are discussing the dangers of these pressures.
Weddings and body transformation
Weddings are often described as “the most important day of your life.” And for many people in the UK are a significant financial investment.
That’s a ton of pressure for one day.
Beauty is a central theme in modern weddings, the average bride in the UK spends £720 on hair and makeup alone.
This beauty pressure undoubtedly stretches to bodies, with the pressure being to have a beauty-standard aligning body, which of course means being thinner. Pressure is placed on the bride both subliminally via the media and wedding culture (a glance through a wedding magazine will tell you that) but it is also common to experience pressure from the family. Approximately 12–33 percent of brides-to-be report being advised to lose weight by someone in their life.
Many women will attend dress fittings months in advance, and buy a wedding dress a size smaller as motivation to fit into it.
The fitness industry often markets aggresively to brides-to-be. Taking advantage of the desire for rapid transformations.
A quick google search and you can find hundreds of personal trainers and nutritionists specialised in wedding transformations.
An extreme example of body pressures placed on brides, is the 2010 reality show from the US, Bridalplasty. Where the winner was awarded “a wedding and transformative plastic surgery procedures”.
The risks of wedding crash diets:
The type of body transformation that is expected of brides commonly requires crash dieting. A crash diet is one that involves significant restriction, with the intention of rapid weight loss.
Unsurprisingly, crash diets are highly dangerous and a short term crash diet, can have long term impacts on health.
There have been many cases in the news of deaths caused by crash diets. For example Samantha Clowe, died from heart failure after following a 530kcal per day diet of LighterLife.
Diets don’t work
Outside of the cases of extreme crash diets, a research study on brides dieting found that the average bride does not actually lose weight, despite trying, but does on average gain weight post-wedding.
Did you know that you are more likely to gain weight from a diet than lose it?
Diets trigger a biological response designed to protect the body from famine. When you restrict food, especially in crash or very low-calorie diets, your metabolism slows down to conserve energy. Changes in appetite and fullness hormones make you feel hungrier and less satisfied after eating, increasing the likelihood of overeating once the diet ends.
Over time, repeated cycles of restriction and regain (often called “yo-yo dieting”) can lead to weight gain that’s harder to lose.
Diets don’t work.
My own experience
Working in eating disorders, I’ve seen, on more than one occasion sadly, weddings act as the trigger for a full-blown eating disorder.
Eating disorders are complex mental illnesses, caused by a combination of genetic predisposition and environmental triggers. A wedding crash diet is a textbook example of such a trigger: socially sanctioned, intensely goal-focused, and emotionally charged.
What might start as “just losing a bit of weight for the dress” can quickly spiral into obsessive behaviour around food, exercise, and appearance, particularly for those already vulnerable. I’ve supported clients who struggled for years after what was meant to be a short-term diet, with the initial trigger long behind them but the eating disorder still present. The wedding came and went. The ED stayed.
Summary
Wedding culture places immense pressure on brides to look a certain way, but there’s no dress, diet, or makeup artist that can capture who you are when you feel safe, loved, and truly present. You are not going to feel fully present if you are tired and underfuelled.
You don’t need to change your body to be worthy of love, attention, or celebration.
If you are someone getting married or has been married and have engaged in this behaviour, this is not to shame you. It is totally understandable why you might feel you want to lose weight. I think we should stop normalising crash diets as a bridal rite of passage. Stop equating thinness with beauty, or transformation with discipline. Let’s make space for brides (and grooms, and everyone else) to show up as themselves joyful, nourished, and present.
Because the big day shouldn’t come at the cost of your body or your wellbeing.