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How to lose weight for our wedding

If I had a pound for everyone who said, "I'm going on a diet for the wedding" our debts would be cleared. Personally I think a ban on snacking between meals does the job, but I spotted this article in The Times today, and thought of you.

The Wedding Diet

You’re getting married – or it’s your best friend’s wedding, and you want to look your best. Amanda Ursell has the diet to help you lose 5lb in five days or 11lb in a month

On the eve of the wedding season it is not simply brides who want to look their best. Everyone from the mother of the bride to the bridesmaids and best man, not to mention female guests eager to catch the eye of the latter, will want to shine. Dropping unwanted pounds is a sure-fire way to boost your confidence and feel great on the big day.

If you have only a week to go before your nuptials, then it is still not too late to get into shape. By following our Five-Day Plan you can lose a good 5lb and help to solve problems like bloating and swollen ankles. If you still have time to plan and the wedding is a month or more away you can really go for it by following our One-Month Plan and shed up to a stone while improving the look of your skin and developing an inner glow.

Whichever plan you follow, the first task is to cut down on salt. Most of us eat at least 9g a day, most of which comes from processed foods, breakfast cereals and bread. Bringing this down to just 3g daily means you can lose up to 1.5 litres of excess fluid (which often pools around the hands and ankles), which equates to 2lb–3lb in weight.

By following our plans, which just about cut out processed foods and make use of “herb salt”, a delicious, natural lower-salt alternative (see recipe), you won’t compromise your taste buds. You will be eating more vegetables and fruit than you are probably accustomed to. Both are good for potassium, which encourages kidneys to flush out excess salt and fluid.

Related Links

• The five-day plan

• The one-month plan

Fruit and vegetables are also a powerhouse of vitamins, such as vitamin C, and supernutrients, such as the red and purple pigments in berries that seem to help circulation. Greens such as broccoli and mange-tout are great for lutein, a yellow pigment that appears to help to protect our skin from loss of elasticity and dehydration caused by ultraviolet radiation. Essential oils in shellfish, fish and nuts also help your skin’s texture, encouraging smoothness.

Grapefruit is particularly good. Try to have half to one ruby-red or pink grapefruit before breakfast each morning (the only exception is if you are on cholesterol-lowering medication). Research indicates that people who develop this habit lose more weight than nongrapefruit eaters.

Eggs are also on the breakfast menu because research suggests that they help weight loss – people who ate two eggs at breakfast, one study reported, ate 400 calories fewer than usual over the day ahead. The explanation probably lies in their high-protein content which is a natural appetite suppressant.

Lunches on the programme are designed to be simple to make either at home or to grab on the run.

Dinners are intended to be delicious, as well as nutritious, using mackerel, eggs and steak for a good dose of iron needed for energy. Fish and poultry are lighter dishes but are full of protein – essential for great-looking skin. And research from Oxford Brookes University shows that the hot supernutrients in chilli help to speed up our metabolism.

*All of our recipes serve one. For two, double the quantities and add a pinch of common sense.

Beat the bloat

Eat slowly. This reduces the amount of air swallowed that otherwise gets trapped in your intestines and causes bloating. Avoid chewing gum and drinking fizzy drinks, which also lead to gulping down extra air and introduce unwanted gases into your stomach and intestines. Avoid food that you know causes wind – such as cabbage and swede. Try having a Danone Actimel probiotic yoghurt drink as one of your daily snacks. Rich in lactobacillus “good” bacteria, they appear to reduce symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome which can include bloating.

The best fake tans

Lancôme Flash Bronzer Mousse, £19.50 (10/10)

Too Faced Tanning Bed in a Tube, £16 (10/10)

St-Tropez Everyday Moisturiser, £12.95 (9/10)

Olay Complete Everyday Sunshine Face, £7.49 (9/10)

The Organic Pharmacy Self Tan, £29.95 (8/10)

Picture poses

Lower your chin: this casts a shadow on your neck and adds definition.

Turn your head to one side: this extends your neck.

Pull your shoulders back and extend your elbows back and away from your body: this avoids spreading the flesh.

Pose at a slight angle: if you stand straight on you will look wider.

Shift your weight on to one foot: this avoids looking stiff.

Cross your ankles, not your legs.

Wedding lists

Heather and I have been surprised at the number of people who have said to us 'There's nothing on your wedding list' so far.

You're right, there is very little there. The reason for that is, we didn't expect anyone to be looking at the lists until a bit closer to the wedding and consequently we're yet to add items. There are a few but Heather is working out what we need and will put them online soon.

For ease of reference, if you want to find our wedding lists click



Argos click here (reference number 422449)

For convenience there may be a Debenhams list as well, but they won't let us put anything on it until 3 months before the wedding as they can't guarantee to have the same items in stock. Anyway, we'll be putting things on the lists gradually and thank you everyone for your kind offers of presents. We really appreciate it!

Weddings!

I've been to a couple of weddings over the past week. One was the marriage of my good friends Chris and Angela. David has done a fantastic photo essay of the day, and you can view it by clicking on the picture below:


On Easter Saturday Heather and I attended the wedding of our college friends, Guann-Yeu and Cathy.

It was a lot of fun

and together we picked up some do's and don'ts for our own Big Day.

Marry young: matrimony is wasted on the old

This was in the Times yesterday, saying 24 is about the perfect age to marry.

Mary Kenny: Thunderer

If it is the received opinion that Prince William and Kate Middleton were too young to be wed, then I would suggest that the received opinion is in error. Indeed, if it is the young Prince’s own view that 24 is too young to be married, then I would suggest this may be a mistake. The mid-twenties are a perfect time for a young couple to be married. Indeed, at 25, a woman is already past the peak of her biological fertility, which occurs at the age of 23.

It has become the custom among the middle classes not to enter into matrimony until they reach their late twenties or early to middle thirties. In working-class milieux, it has become the custom not to marry at all, but to cohabit without benefit of state or clergy, although this is usually because of the reluctance of the male to “commit”, rather than the female’s refusal of a stable contract. These social trends are among the reasons why marriage itself is decreasing.

Having failed to take the plunge in the salad days of their twenties, the thirtysomethings grow ever more picky and choosy, and the young women ever more concerned about their fertility choices receding: while the available pool of suitable males shrinks ever smaller.

Marriage is a relationship that requires the paradoxical virtues of both fortitude and flexibility, or courage and tolerance, and these characteristics are best found in the young. The young are brave; they have valour; they are ready to plunge into the whirlpool and take the risk. And surely the marriage of true minds and one flesh has its most radiant flowering in the full sunshine of youth’s idealism — not of maturity’s calculation?

Many individuals in their thirties are already, in the old phrase, “set in their ways”. Whereas in the freshness and pliability of youth, couples can grow together. And even should the youthful marriage not endure, much is learnt from the experience during those formative years.

I am sure it is wise that William should not feel pressurised to marry, but neither should he be pressurised out of marriage by vogueish ideas that later unions are always better. It is not necessarily so.

Of course, there may be many other private reasons why the near-betrothal of Kate Middleton and Prince William has not come to pass. The course of any love — true or untrue — never did run smooth, and quarrels, jealousies and other storms of the heart are par for the course. But let it not be because the couple are thought too young and green. Once past the early twenties, the sooner married the better, surely.

Heather looks like...

And of course Heather looks like beautiful actresses. Well most of them are.

My face matches...

Apparently I'm 75% the same face as Steve Buscemi, a great actor who I admire, but not exactly a heart-throb. And if you get a little less of a match, I quickly end up sharing a face with that well known Asian celebrity, Shigeki Maruyama. What do you think, is there really a resemblance?

Online wedding planner

To see all of the important locations of our wedding on one interactive map check out our Wedding Mapper map!

Now this really is super duper. For any/all you folks hoping to travel to our wedding in 108 days, it just got a whole lot easier. Complete with photographs, this little map gizmo has everything marked on it. From the church, to the receptions plus suggestions of places to stay. Click on it have the your sense of direction enhanced!