You get points because you’re doing it the correct way.
And this we have to stop - the wedding industry is only interested in extracting money from women, not actually giving them a good wedding. If women would stop buying dresses too small and stop drinking the kool-aid on what the “wedding industry” declares to be a proper wedding dress and instead buy clothes that fit the fucking industry would be forced to either change or go under.
Of course, silly me - I didn’t purchase a multi-thousand dollar dress in a “traditional” style, I went with ethnic attire which, while more expensive than my usual wear, nonetheless actually fit me without a need for altering either me or the dress. And that choice was also partly economic, in that I couldn’t afford to get on the wedding industry bandwagon, so I went with choices I could afford and that I actually choose instead of some “wedding planner” telling me what I was supposed to want.
Mind you, I won’t say a peep at a wedding to someone who went whole hog on the modern style, it’s their day and their choice, but my opinion is that a lot of women out there are being foolish about this.
Well, hon, the thing is while it’s vanity motivating you you’re going about this in a way that will leave you healthier in the end - exercise and portion control. You’ll not only lose weight and tone up, those effects will be with you after the honeymoon and maybe you can even continue this long term. As opposed to a NG diet that will leave you weaker than before, may fuck up your health, and whose effects likely won’t last past the first two weeks of the marriage.
When I was a kid, there was one of those “shock” articles in Reader’s Digest written by an ex-smoker. he saw people in the cancer ward who’d lost parts of their larynx or esophagus being fed through tubes unserted in their nostrils, and being disgusted by it. At the end of the article, he is doing the same thing. The moral of the story is clear – don’t smoke, or you could end up getting your food through a tube i your nose!
So what are girls supposed to learn from this newest incarnation? Don’t get engaged! You could end up feeding through a Nose Tube!
Don’t gain weight! It’s as bad as having Throat Cancer!*
Ah, I see - you think there is something magical protecting brides doing this for a crash weight loss for their wedding that will protect them from the side effects seen in tube feeding? Sorry, I don’t deal in that sort of magical thinking.
Does that mean you couldn’t find any deaths caused by this specific diet?
This procedure has been in use for some time in more than one developed nation. Surely the casualties from this specific diet would be well documented, right?
Perhaps you could at least document the post in this thread where I said I believe in magic. Oh wait … I didn’t. That was all you.
The reason you can’t buy a dress that fits is that salons really can’t afford to stock these extremely expensive dresses in a bunch of sizes knowing that they sell really very few of them and are stuck with discontinued out of style dresses if they don’t sell (which is how I got mine so cheaply.) So it’s not really a Wedding Industrial Complex thing precisely, although the wacky sizing certainly is and the specific sizes they stock, well, that certainly. (The black lady salon my mom got her MOB dress at does the precise same thing, only they’re much larger sizes and they plan to alter down, not up.)
Oh, please - they could stock more realistic sizes, and dresses designed to be altered to fit something other than stick people. Yes, it IS a wedding industry thing.
Or, like I said, women could just wear something other than the “traditional” gowns which have a surprisingly short tradition when you actually look into it. Up until around 1940 “traditional” was more in line with daily styles of dress (albeit in white, typically). It was also considered acceptable for a woman simply wear her “Sunday best” to get married. The extravagant one-time-use gown for everyone (not just royalty or the super-rich) is really an invention of the latter part of the 20th Century. Extreme dieting to fit into one is a fad of the 21st Century.
As I said, I don’t mind women choosing a particular option, what I object to is that more and more their options are being restricted. It’s no longer a matter of “choose a white gown” but rather “choose a white gown of X size” whether it fits or not, and if you have to literally starve yourself to get into it, well, don’t you want to look good for your Special Day? Fuck no, I want to be able to breathe on that Special Day because I don’t think “blue skin tone due to lack of oxygen” is attractive on a human being.
Bravo to the media reports that point out how stupid the “nosejuice” diet is for these purposes, but I have to think the people who simply shrug and say "oh, well, have to look good" at any cost are nucking futs.
Given that this diet is nothing more than the tube-feeding that hospital patients get when they are not to take nourishment by mouth (e.g. people with pancreatitis), the risks are pretty well-known. This isn’t a new thing. It’s an old thing used to accomplish something it was never intended for.
And therein lies the problem. Very few hospital patients are ever placed on an NG tube; it’s generally reserved for patients with the most serious problems because the nutrients have to be mixed just right. They also have to be slowly reintroduced to solid food; total parenteral nutrition (which is what this is) can cause refeeding syndrome in as few as five days; these women are on this diet for 10. This is in addition to kidney stones, gallstones, and the other problems that are known to happen because they have happened.
If you want a cite that THIS EXACT diet has KILLED BRIDES, I can’t help you, but there’s nothing special about either being a bride or using a nasogastric tube that’s going to protect you from the dangers of a very low-calorie diet, which is all the K-E diet is.
Right, and so you use a combination of diet and exercise to lose those 10 pounds safely over a month or so, or you pay attention to your body in the 6 months before your wedding and you don’t gain the weight in the first place.
Can’t they order a dress in your size? I didn’t buy a foofy white dress, so I have no idea how these things work for brides, but every time I’m a bridesmaid, they stuff me into the largest size they have to try the style and then order one in Heifer that will actually fit based on my measurements. They do still have to take in the waist a bit, 'cause I got some junk in the trunk, and what fits the hips hangs at the waist. Alterations never cost me more than $20, because they order something in the approximate right size to begin with.
MsRobyn, this isn’t TPN - TPN goes into the bloodstream, avoiding the digestive system entirely. This is NG feeding, which still goes to the stomach and intestines. But the rest of your point stands - nurses are watching closely when you start eating food if you haven’t been eating food by mouth in a few days.
I did buy a foofy white dress, and was constrained by the selection in the shop, because I was shopping a mere six weeks prior to getting married and didn’t have time to order one in the correct size. So I bought a dress that was way too big and had it altered. Using the logic of the wedding dress dieters, I should have instead started massively overeating in an attempt to get my body to conform to the dress by the day of my wedding.
All the ones I liked couldn’t be ordered because they were discontinued. I suppose that’s because stock sits around (because how many wedding dresses do you buy in a lifetime?) especially stock that’s, are you ready for this? not strapless. However, they do make them with exceptionally large seam allowances for alteration. Not that that makes it easier to see how on earth you’d look in the thing if you could zip it up.
And Broomstick, yes I agree that it’s silly that their sample size is patently ridiculous. They tended to be 8’s, which are really 6’s in wedding dresses. Although I do suppose you have to have a size that’s somewhere in the middle for alteration to fit a wide variety of types. (The ones I tried on in the really fancy salon were NOT anywhere near “in the middle”.)
I spent the whole process wondering what on earth women bigger than me do. To be fair to David’s Bridal, Wal-Mart of Wedding Dresses, they DID have a lot more sizes to try on.
ETA - plus, remember you’d have to order it without being able to try it on. I heard some horror stories on Offbeat Bride about salesgirls pinning the dress to your front.
I dunno how big you are, but when I got married I was at the highest weight I’ve been as an adult (around a size 20), and I went to a specialty plus-size bridal shop.
Oh mine was like a huge batch of errors from start to finish. The bottom layer of the wedding cake cracked in half (unbeknownst to me) and my stepsister had to “glue” it back together with coffee stirrers and some icing she cadged off an Albertson’s bakery lady.
The organist “lost” the copy of “Sunrise, Sunset” I gave him along with the other three or four songs for the pre-ceremony music.
Fifteen minutes before the ceremony my sister somehow manages to rip a hole in her hose with her nails and had to drive at breakneck speed to the Albertson’s to go buy more.
DURING the ceremony, there is one point where Stickman and I are supposed to go up to the altar. Sisterchick is supposed to take my (heavily beaded) train and lay it GENTLY to one side. She picks it up and tosses it over to my left and it lands with a thump that’s audible on the video.
The pastor took our wedding rings and laid them in the center of his bible to bless them, then dropped mine and it rolled down the steps, across the floor and under a pew. One of the guests had to retrieve it for us.
Shortly after the ceremony, we’re having pictures taken and one of my flowergirls (she was I think 5 or 6 at the time) was complaining she’d lost one of her clip on earrings. I stepped back so they could look for it and heard an audible crunch. I’d turned the plastic earring into powder with my heel.
You can see the grungy tennis shoes I put on post-ceremony in one of the reception photos, but in my defense, I’d been in those damn heels for something like 8 or 9 hrs by that point and my feet hurt.
At the reception, I tried to sit in a chair and missed, sprawling on my ass. No I wasn’t drunk..there was no alcohol at my reception.
At the time, it wasn’t at all funny but looking back now I laugh my ass off.
No idea where one finds one of those - there’s certainly not one in town. You’d have to travel.
ETA - if it matters, to those at all interested in the extremely weird world of trying on wedding dresses, at the time I weighed about 165 and was wearing a 14 in pants and a 10 in shirts.
The thing about just ordering a wedding dress in the correct size is, it’s almost impossible. When I ordered my wedding dress, I tried on the one in the store, it fit but was a little snug. The lady wanted me to order that size but I ordered a size larger. When it came in it was smaller than the one I tried on. You cannot return it for a different size, you’re screwed or you lose some weight. I dieted and exercised to the point I could do the Jane Fonda extreme work out video, even the half hour killer abs portion and I was still uncomfortable on my wedding day.
I thought this was freaky weird too but I can see doing it in a desparate moment. But I don’t think I could have and still gone out in public. It’s no crazier than other things people do and probably no worse than some of the stimulant pills you can buy on the internet.
Most wedding dresses require some kind of alteration, but it shouldn’t be major…
(When I go married, I was told that your wedding dress size is usually 2 sizes larger than what you normally wear, so it is like the opposite of vanity sizes. Why, I have no idea, perhap to freak out brides and make them want to lose weight, so more alterations are required?)
Twenty pounds is just about the sweet spot of this. Because twenty pounds is the difference between “average” and thin. It’s the difference between “I let myself gain a few pounds” and “I’ve been disciplined about my weight.”
And I’m amused by the outrage. People tattoo and pierce themselves to meet their idea of what they want to look like. We dye our hair. While I’m not about to loose twenty pounds via feeding tube, it seems less harmful to me than a permanent tattoo. Why is it around here that steps taken to acheive mainstream beauty are mocked and it’s practioners taken to task for low self esteem, while steps taken to buck the system are fine? Someone else is doing this to themselves. And saying they must have low self esteem is no less nasty than questioning the self esteem of someone who allowed themselves to get morbidly obese, or tattoo themselves, or pierces unusually.
