NYT: “Bridal Hunger Games”
In March, Jessica Schnaider, 41, of Surfside, Fla., was preparing to shop for a wedding gown by spending eight days on a feeding tube. The diet, under a doctor’s supervision, offered 800 calories a day while she went about her business, with a tube in her nose.
…Something medical is indeed happening in the newest diet to reach the United States. Dr. Oliver R. Di Pietro has been offering what he calls a K-E diet at his modest clinic in Bay Harbor Islands, Fla., since last July.
“I get a lot of brides,” Dr. Di Pietro said. “Nervous eating.”
It uses a nasogastric tube (a tube that goes through the nose and down the esophagus into the stomach) to provide all nourishment, with no carbohydrates, for 10 days. Dr. Di Pietro said body weight is lost quickly through ketosis, the state in which the body burns fat rather than sugar. Patients at his office are monitored during the 10-day period for things like constipation, bad breath and dizziness.
“Any extreme low-calorie diet is associated with side effects, kidney stones, dehydration, headaches,” Dr. Aronne said, “and if you lose muscle mass and water, what’s the point of that?”
I have never, ever understood why some women long for a “perfect” wedding; let alone why a crash diet should be considered a necessary prerequisite for one. After all, their husbands-to-be fell in love and proposed to them at their existing weights. Beyond that, the right dress, hairstyle and makeup can make any size woman look her best.
Obviously, I have nothing against people who want to lose surplus pounds and look their best for a special occasion (and hopefully, beyond). But this isn’t a good way to go about it. If I were a man, I’d seriously question the judgment of my wife-to-be, if she went on an extreme pre-wedding diet like this. A wedding is supposed to be a celebration of love, not a high-stress, mega-expensive beauty pageant.
April 21, 2012
The things people do to serve their own vanity just amazes me. A feeding tube through your nose just to loose a few pounds before your wedding. Thats just crazy in my book.
My wife has always been a “plump” to “large” women. I still married her because I love her just the way she is.
If she had wanted to put a “tube up her nose”, I would probably have wanted to put my “foot up her butt”. lol
April 21, 2012
And from what I understand, the doctor charges $1500 for this “treatment”.
April 21, 2012
And he gets it, too. The irony is that the sort of person who would pay it, is the sort of person who – in the end – probably isn’t someone that a sane, rational person would want to marry.
Ultimately, to make a marriage work long-term, it helps to have a sense of proportion – not to mention, a sense of humor. You need to be able to laugh at the sometimes-absurd crap life throws at you, and to avoid sweating the small stuff. Suffice it to say, someone who’s so determined to be “perfect,” that she’d pay $1500 (more than what some folks make in a month) to endure extreme privation (and a rather publicly ridiculous form of it, at that) doesn’t sound like someone capable of doing that.