Being a bride myself once, I know first-hand the pressures of looking great on your wedding day.
The hair, the nails, the make up – it’s enough to send a bride-to-be into a flurry of anxiety to try and look perfect on her wedding day. But perhaps the biggest stress a bride can endure is looking good in her wedding dress, and especially slimming down to make it fit.
Though amped up diet and fitness plans are more and more common among brides, a new diet trend for drastic, rapid weight loss has become especially appetizing to brides who are seeking to drop the pounds quickly before their big day.
It’s called the K-E Diet and requires a feeding tube to be placed down a patient’s nose and into their stomach so they can be fed a special liquid cocktail that promotes weight loss – up to 20 pounds in 10 days.
Dr. Oliver Di Pietro of Bay Harbor Islands, Florida, is one of the many physicians offering the K-E Diet at his practice. He demonstrated how the diet works on ABC, and sounded very confident of its success.
According to Di Pietro, dieters are fed a constant drip of fat and protein mixed with water – a substance that contains absolutely no carbohydrates, and totals only 800 calories a day. The diet works so effectively because body fat is burned off through ketosis, a process that leaves muscle intact.
Di Pietro says patients aren’t hungry at all for the entire 10-day period, but may suffer from such common side effects as bad breath and constipation, because the liquid contains no fiber. K-E dieters are under a doctor’s supervision during their time on the diet, but are not hospitalized. Instead, they keep a bag containing the liquid and wear it constantly like a purse, in addition to their feeding tube.
As far as cost goes, it’s not cheap. Di Pietro charges $1,500 for the 10-day plan. And although the K-E Diet has been popular in Europe for a while now, it’s still fairly new to the U.S. But despite the cost, people are already eager to test it out.
One bride-to-be, Jessica Schnaider, turned to the K-E Diet after she was unable to lose those last 10 pounds before her wedding. Schnaider spent eight days on the feeding tube, forgoing the last two days since she’d already lost the amount of weight she hoped to. She said the diet was a great success for her, as ‘those 10 pounds went off fast, without hunger.’
But the diet has experts concerned mostly for the low calorie count, but also for the speed at which dieters lose weight. One psychoanalyst argued the mind can’t keep up with a weight reduction that fast, and others more say the pounds dieters drop will likely inch back shortly after they’re shed.
DietsInReview.com’s Registered Dietitian, Mary Hartley, RD, says 90% of brides want to lose weight, but crash dieting before the wedding isn’t a good idea.
“The K-E Diet is an extreme. Sure, your body can manage to stay alive during a period of severe nutrient deprivation, but who wants to? I don’t recommend entering a ketogenic state before the wedding,” says Mary. “Ketosis feels unpleasant with headaches, fatigue, dry mouth, thirst, bad breath, dizziness, nausea, and sleep problems. And the patient is truly in ketosis because the doctor – who is charging $1,500 – makes sure of it.”
Mary also argues that if ketosis is done too close to the wedding, the bride may look shrunken. And that the weight lost is largely water and will surely return.
Aside from the high cost and obvious health concerns, brides shouldn’t try to lose wedding weight quickly, but instead strive to achieve a healthy weight through diet and exercise. And rather than focusing on a number for the big day, they should shift their aim to leading a health lifestyle for the benefit of their health in the long run.
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