The Healthy Bride

There are always a lot of questions and concerns from brides about how best to get great wedding dress arms, and a flat belly before their wedding.  Both are possible!  However, it’s not easy (sorry!)

Here are a few tips for the bride on how best to proceed toward this goal:

You can’t spot reduce.  Sorry (again), but spot reduction is a myth.  I wrote an entire blog post (the war on bridal back fat), so please go read this post.

The good news! You CAN spot strengthen. Getting your muscles stronger will make them more defined for sure, so don’t stop working your arms or doing your ab work, there is just more to it than that.  Women have more body fat than men.  It’s a fact of nature.  We carry more fat because women have the babies.  If you want buff arms and a flat belly, you will need to work off the fat that is covering your gorgeous muscles.

How to do that?   If you want hot arms and flat bellies you want to work on losing fat.  This means working out, and eating fewer calories than you take in.  There are a million options for losing weight, but what I believe works is finding a way of eating that will last a lifetime so you don’t get on the unhealthy yo-yo cycle.   We have some great articles from nutritionists I love and believe in on our website.

The good news! You CAN spot strengthen. Getting your muscles stronger will make them more defined for sure, so don’t stop working your arms or doing your ab work, there is just more to it than that. (check out our “bridecast workouts“)

How do you workout in a way that loses fat? This is another area loaded with myths and controversy.  My belief?  Workout hard (I mean on a scale from 1-10 workout at level you consider 7 – 9 for 40-60 minutes). If you are not huffing and puffing and sweating, you are not working hard enough.  If you can’t push yourself hard enough, find someone who will in a class or a trainer.  Be sure you warm up for 10 minutes first, then go hard, then cool down for 5-10 minutes and stretch.  Vary your workouts!  Doing the same thing over and over allows your body to adapt, so will no longer be giving you the stress you need to change.

What about weight training? Lift enough weight so you are “stressing” (NOT INJURING) your muscles. I see a lot of women picking up 3 pound weights when they should be picking up 10 pounders. You want to be sure you have enough weight to make some change in your muscles, and your muscles will only change if you “stress” them. If you are not using heavy enough weights, nothing will ever change. With weights, warm up for 10 minutes first, cool down and stretch at the end.  Make sure you have good form.  If you don’t know what you are doing, hire a trainer to help you learn.  Again with weights, you need to vary the program at least every 6 – 8 weeks.  Doing the same thing over and over allows your body to adapt, so will no longer be giving you the stress you need to change.

Track your food intake.  This is hard, but really gives you truth-in-eating!  The website I use is mypyramidtracker.gov, but there are others like sparkpeople.  The reason I like my pyramid tracker is that you can add your exercise and then get an energy balance at the end of the day.  Be sure you are taking in less than you are expending, and the fat WILL burn off.

What if the fat won’t budge?  I mean really, if you are working hard, eating healthy – and I mean all the days of the week, including the weekends, and things are not moving, go see a Naturopath. I say Naturopath  rather than a Dr. because they will really look into every aspect of your health to figure out what is going on for you and help you reach your health and weight loss goals.

The Secret! Be consistent. Yes, that is the secret to losing weight, keeping it off and being a healthy bride with buff arms and a flat stomach. Be consistent, stay with your program long term, give yourself enough time (1-2 pounds per week) and don’t try to be perfect about it.  Now  just go do it.

This is a subject that comes up again and again in our Bridal Bootcamps.  Every bride wants every inch of her body feeling great as she walks up the aisle, and brides who are planning to wear a strapless dress are particularly sensitive to how they see their backs.

Nature, as it turns out, decides when, where, and how much fat we carry on each of our bodies. Gender also plays a large role. Males tend to store their fat in their midsections; while females carry their around their hips and thighs, but some women also get pockets of upper back fat.

Too much food and too little physical exercise are what usually leads to those unsightly pounds, but where those pounds are added is largely a case of genetics.

Back fat is not popular with women, especially brides. Even women who are okay with bits of fat in strategic places intensely dislike the back fat that forms ridges around their bras and would like to get rid it. I have heard this described as “boob fat” and “back fat” and every bride I have met so far wants it to go away before the wedding photos begin.

You may have heard in the popular press (or from ads on TV) that you can concentrate on reducing flab from
any specific part of your body.  I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this is just not true.  Spot reducing is a well supported Myth.  Everyone has areas of the body which favor fat formation more than others and exercising muscles underlying those particular areas of fat will not make the fat go away.

The only way to lose fat from any part of your body is to shed pounds from your entire body – exercise combined with a permanent eating regimen that focuses on eating healthier foods in smaller quantities.

Are there any exercises that can target back fat?  The good news here is yes, but it might not be what you expect.  What you need to focus on to lose that back fat is an aerobic workout that burns calories.  You need to be burning more calories than you are eating.  It’s that simple.

Choose activities that you enjoy, are easily accessible, within your budget, and effective in shedding pounds. Weight-resistance training is good, but be sure to get some aerobic exercise, too. You want to be working hard enough that you are sweating and huffing and puffing.  Think about the level of intensity you are working on a scale from 0-10.  0= laying on the couch watching TV with the remote.  10 = absolute maximum, pass-out stage.  When you are warming up, shoot for a 5-6 level.  Hold this for about 10 minutes.  Next, move into your aerobic zone of your workout (where you really burn the calories) and move into the 6-9 level.  Go with how you feel that day, and be sure to vary your workout. If you have been doing the same workout for awhile or if you have reached a plateau, consider adding interval training.

Interval training is basically exercise which consists of activity at high intensityfor a period of time, followed by low intensity exercise for a period of time. These ’sets’ are repeated. Interval traning can really have an enormous impact on your fitness level, your metabolism and can spice up a workout routine that has gone stale.

If you want to tone and firm up the upper back muscles for better appearance; or for that strapless dress, then resistance training is a great idea.  Working your back also lowers your chance of back injury, improves your posture, and provides stronger support for your entire body. Check out our strapless dress podcast workout!