The Wedding Dress Diet

If your big day is approaching and you need to lose some pounds to fit into that wedding dress, you’re going to need a spectacular diet. If you haven’t found the perfect dress yet, sites such as at berketexbride.com have plenty of styles to inspire you.

Of course, the sooner you start on your wedding day diet the better the results, and the following tips will help you to slim down and feel your best.

Go Paleo

The Paleo diet is one that takes your eating habits back to basics. The rules are simple, you can only eat what cavemen used to eat.

This means no:

• Grains (bread, rice, pasta, oats)
• Potatoes
• Legumes (peas, beans, peanuts)
• Processed foods
• Dairy (unless from grass-fed animals)

Once you cut out all that you’re left with only naturally occurring foods such as:

• Eggs
• Meat
• Fish
• Oils – Coconut, avocado and olive oils are all great
• Fruits – Go easy on these. Even though the sugar in fruit is natural, it can hinder weight loss if you have too much
• Nuts – A small handful makes a great snack
• Vegetables – Although you’re not allowed regular potatoes, sweet potatoes are considered paleo

If you eat paleo, there’s no need to count calories and once you get the hang of it, it’s quite easy to stick to.

The benefits aren’t just fat loss but also increased energy and you won’t get so bloated. This means that you’ll appear slimmer even before you lose any fat!

Drink more water

This is good advice regardless of whether you have a wedding dress to get into or not. When your body doesn’t get enough water it stores it, this leads to water weight. Drink enough throughout the day and the body no longer has to hold onto it.

This is a great way to detox, lose some inches and shed a few pounds in the run up to a wedding.

It’s also worth knowing that the brain has difficulty telling the difference between thirst and hunger. If you’re hungry try drinking some water, you may just be a little dehydrated and your hunger pangs will diminish.

Look at portion size

Although there’s not really any need to count calories on the paleo diet, that’s no excuse to overeat. A plate of food should be made up of the following:

• A quarter protein – This is meat/fish/eggs, about a palm-sized portion.
• Two thirds carbohydrates – Vegetables and fruit. Approximately the size of two fists.
• The rest should be made up of good fats – Nuts, oils, nut butters, avocado or grass-fed butter

It takes your brain around 20 minutes to catch up with your stomach and tell you you’re full. If you finish a meal and are still hungry, wait a little while before reaching for dessert.

Exercise

Fat loss is mostly down to your diet but it’s the exercise that helps you to tone up. If you’re trying to get into a wedding dress, incorporate some strength training into your routine.

The quickest way to do this is with HIIT (high intensity interval training). These are short blasts of cardio bodyweight exercises, mixed with periods of rest. Because you are working at your absolute maximum, the workouts are generally quite short.

YouTube has plenty of HIIT videos you can do at home but if you need someone to push you, enlist the help of a personal trainer or sign up for some boot camp training.

This diet is down to common sense, it’s okay to treat yourself once in a while but don’t eat bags of trail mix or ‘healthy’ cereals. Take everything in moderation and cut out those nasty processed foods!

This article was written by Amanda Walters, an experienced freelance writer and regular contributor to Huffington Post. Follow her here: @Amanda_W84