Here are 10 secrets for brides to look stunning on the wedding day. Checkout this ultimate wedding shape-up guide and start using these suggestions right away.
Weddings are events to show-off and everybody wants to look their best, more so for the bride for whom it’s the most important day of her life.
Besides, you just cannot describe the feeling, when people would congratulate your fiance and say, “You have got a very beautiful wife”.
But then if you have been careless with your lifestyle, its quite likely that you may have a slightly bloated body, oily skin and an extremely undesirable pouch in the abdominal area. So its important that you get started right away on a fitness / diet regime to help you get back in shape, provided you have time on your hand.
Don’t Have Much Time to Exercise?
It may not be easy to hit the gym just days before the wedding, in which case you can use some of these tips to camouflage the extra bulk and still look slim and stunning on your wedding day.
Say No to Salt
Water retention in your body can make you feel very heavy. You can avoid this problem by keeping away from salty foods for 8 to 10 hours before the ceremony.
Drink lots of water and cranberry juice to flush accumulated fluids out of your body.
Avoid a Bloated Stomach
It’s a good idea to have a good, yummy meal at the beginning of your day. You can then munch a light snack just before the ceremony to keep the energy up.
Eat your food slowly and avoid carbonated drinks. Eating foods like cabbage, broccoli and legumes will also help you avoid bloating which is caused when excess air enters your digestive system.
Keep the Mini Meals Coming
Have small snacks at regular intervals instead of one heavy meal. This will make you feel light as well as energized.
Maintain the Right Posture
The taller you are, the slimmer you look. So, you can avoid looking plumper than you actually are by maintaining an upright posture, by elongating your spine, and holding your head high.
Starting the day with a morning walk, followed by a revitalizing cup of herbal tea, can be a great way to start your D-day.
Dress Up Right
Try heels to give you the illusion of height and reduced inches from the waistline. Wear smart undergarments, Spandex pants can hide those unwanted bumps on your body.
Discuss a new look with your hair dresser. Trying new haircuts can remove inches from your face instantly, making you look leaner.
You are What You Feel
Finally, nothing makes you feel better than embracing your inner beauty. Take pride in yourself and you will feel slimmer even if the actual workout has not been able to reduce the readings on the scales.
Stay calm, keep a good posture and flash your million dollar smile. Take off attention from those little pockets of flab. You can even add a dash of bronzer on your skin to get a gorgeous finish.
Short-Term Fitness Programs
If the wedding day is a few months away, you can get started on a fitness regime. Some of these options are entertaining, in case you’re not really a gym person, and can also be done at home.
Bollywood Dance
Everybody loves this, as it involves dancing to bhangra beats and Bollywood songs. These are high intensity aerobics routine choreographed in typical Bollywood dance steps. You will also have lots of fun doing this workout. If you want to do it from home, you can get a dance workout DVD (Hemalayaa).
Cardio Dance
These are the conventional aerobic routines and are very effective for fat burnout. You might need small equipment such as dumbbells, ankle weights and a stepper block for some of these workouts. Aerobic workout DVDs by Jane Fonda are excellent.
Pilates
If your upper body is slim and all the fat is concentrated around the abdomen, hips, buttocks and thighs, you should consider using lower body Pilate workouts. Mari Winsor’s Lower Body Pilates DVD is a good one for lower body workout.
Power Yoga
Power yoga can help you lose weight and also bring out the perfect shape for your body. It also has a highly detoxifying effect on you, which makes you slimmer and also makes your skin glow. Rodney Yee’s Power Yoga Total Body is a great intermediate workout series, which is suitable for most people.
More Fitness Programs
Usually for many, the four problem areas include stomach, bottom, arms and thighs. If you have a few months on hand, you can target those wobbly bits to get your body into the perfect frame for your wedding dress.
Wobbly Stomach
Lots of cardio, strict diet control, and Ab-exercises (sit-ups, crunches and exercises for your lower abs as well) is what you need to focus on.
Saggy Rear / Thunder Thighs
For this, you need to work-out your glute muscles: squats, lunges, side leg lifts as well as running, stepping or skipping will all help. Taking the stairs (preferably two steps a time) can go a long way to contribute to your J-Lo butt.
Squats and lunges also double up as great thigh trimmers. But rather than just focusing on the large muscles on the front and back of the thighs (the quads and hamstrings) go for activities that work the hips and inner thighs too.
Flabby Arms
Don’t shy away from sleeveless wedding dresses as you can banish those bingo wings by targeting your biceps, triceps and shoulders to get the sexy toned arms you desire.
Tricep dips, good old fashioned press ups, combined with cardiovascular exercise such as “boxercise” or “kickboxing” can help you get slender, strong arms.
More Training & Nutrition Tips
Here are additional training and nutrition tips which will complement your workouts and get you closer to the bride-beautiful body.
- Avoid Alcohol: The calories in wine, beer and spirits are stored as body fat if they’re not used at the time of consumption; so reducing your alcohol intake should help in weight loss.
- Go Natural: Eat whole-food choices for meals and snacks. Processed foods are high in unwanted calories such as fat and sugar and usually low in nutritional quality.
- Drink Lots of Water: Inadequate hydration often invites false hunger pangs and cravings, so avoid eating more by drinking 6-8 glasses of water a day.
- Cardio Workouts (running, cycling): These are proven exercises to burn extra calories and to get a toned body.
- Train Early: Exercising in the morning kick-starts your metabolism (the rate at which you burn calories) and the benefits can last for up to 15 hours after training.
- Up the Resistance: Increasing the resistance (adding hand/leg weights or resistance bands) make workouts bit tougher but yield good results.
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