To diet or not to diet?

So I am not like most people....I actually enjoy the act of eating...far more than a person probably should. Besides the fact that I enjoy cooking food, I also enjoy gobbling it up as soon as it is ready! At the first of our relationship Chad and I had a terrible fight about how I ate with my mouth open. Yes. Apparently I was like a horse eating hay. How I had lived my whole life and never been told by a previous beau or my parents that I ate like pig, was beyond Chad. haha. Worse, was how bruised my ego was at hearing this terrible news! No girl ever wants to be told she makes someone lose their appetite when she eats...especially the man she is in love with! Well, months later I have gotten much better and we can thankfully say I no longer chomp my food down and I actually chew and swallow between mouthfuls.

But, this now brings me to a topic I am very fascinated with, and that is pre-wedding dieting. Does every bride need to diet before her wedding? I am beginning to think this is true since every one of my friends that is married practically starved themselves before their big day and in return looked insanely great on their wedding day. BUT.....what happens if you HATE to diet and you just plain suck at it? Do you just eat whatever you want and risk not fitting into your dress, or do you suck it up and deprive yourself so you look good? Another thing that is really interesting to me is the phrase "You will be so nervous and stressed out you will lose weight and hardly eat". Well, to that I say what if when you are stressed you DO eat? In fact what if frozen yogurt pints from Haagan Daaz makes everything better? What then? I had an acquintance tell me the other day that all the talk of being too stressed and not wanting to eat and what not was all a big heaping pile of BS. She said "I had so many family and friends in town that all we did was go out to dinner and to drinks and therefore I gained weight right before my wedding". FINALLY an honest soul. Now this is a scenario that seems vaguely familiar to me............................. A few weeks ago (say a month and a half ago) Chad and my whole family traveled to San Francisco for my brother Tallis and his fiance Kaen's (pronounced Gen) wedding. I had the privilage of being a bridesmaid in the wedding and got to wear a darling dress from J CREW. Mind you I picked out the dress and the size and was well aware of what I was purchasing. When the dress came it fit like a glove and I was thrilled! Well....I am not sure what happened in the next 3-4 months, but something did, and it made putting the dress on the day before the wedding the worst 20 mins of my life. Yeah.....um the dress not only didn't fit (mostly around the chest area...which is normal for me if you know me) but it wasn't budging a centimeter! I had Kaen and my mother trying as hard as they could to get this dress zipped up. Bless their hearts they put every ounce of strength into it, and I was sucking in so hard I was about to faint! The only thing that stopped me from crying my eyes out and screaming at the mirror was the fact that this had to be a freaking joke! Any minute I was going to wake up because this had to be a horrible dream! This dress wasn't just a little bit tight, it was like it was rebelling agianst me and all the chocolate I had consumed from across the street at Ghiridellie Square. Oy.................... After like I said, about 20 mins, the zipper magically zipped up and I was SO relieved (and so was Kaen I think because she probably was freaking out inside about what her bridesmaid and the dress that couldn't be worn LOL). The fun didn't end there though folks....the next day at the actual event, it took not two, but THREE people to zip that sucker up. After being stretched out to the hills the day before, it actually zipped up a ton easier, but we still needed the extra help, my ego was still severely bruised (about ten girls were in that room getting ready and I was the only one with a dress that was clearly too small for her).

Which brings me to the question I posed at the beginning.....do we diet before our wedding or do we defy the gods and just see what happens? I obviously at first that I would go for the latter choice, but for the sake of winding up in the same position I was with that fateful bridesmaid dress, I think I will go on a diet. Mind you I am not much of a dieter, so when I say that word, I mean it in the loosest of contexts. To me a diet is not eating more than one slice of bread a day (which is probably worse than going without water for me) and eating frozen yogurt rather than ice cream. Does it mean giving up all that is bad for me? HECK NO who do you think I am? Plus, luckily fo rme I am having my dress made and so I can always just ask Penny to let it out a little :). Let's hear it for having something made to fit YOUR ever changing female body! :) haha