I Refuse to Let My Wedding Be a Weight-Loss Goal

One of the only encouraging parts of postponing my May 2020 wedding due to the coronavirus outbreak has been one simple realization: I’m not alone. Thanks to the internet, I’ve managed to find scores of other couples who are postponing their big day because of COVID-19 too. Together we’ve commiserated, compared backup plans, and tried to find the silver lining over direct messages or Instagram comments. It’s been something that’s brought me a great deal of comfort in a time that has been filled with sadness, chaos, and disappointment. But it’s also brought me various versions of one recurring idea: At least there’s more time to reach my goal weight.

Ironically, I spent our one-and-a-half-year-long engagement in an active, daily battle to not diet for our wedding. After a decade of yo-yo dieting and obsessive exercise habits, I was ready for a lifestyle that was healthy and, for once, actually sustainable. This meant no more crash diets, no more starving myself, no more apps that told me how I should feel about myself based on the numerical amount of calories or carbs I had consumed in a single day. I was exhausted by all of it, and I knew that if I could stay balanced and confident through the wedding-planning process without telling myself daily that I had to be smaller, then it would be a victory. I told myself that it would set the tone for the rest of my life. If I could ignore the targeted ads for “sweating for the wedding” programs and detox shakes and bridal bootcamps and achieving the “right” body for my dream dress, then I could probably ignore that stuff forever. I knew I’d be happier and healthier for it.

This is all way easier said than done.

As our wedding date got closer, the weight-loss-obsessed parts of my brain started to become harder to ignore. When I tried my dress on six months before the wedding and it was too tight, I quickly spiraled to the same dark places I had been so many times before. These were the places that told me that skipping meals was okay. That going to bed just feeling just a little hungry was success. That maybe it would be just fine if I made myself throw up a time or two. I found myself visiting Reddit pages where people would write about how their latest fast was going, devouring comments about how many hours, days, weeks, it had been since people had eaten solid food.

My body was a before, but wedding dresses were only for afters.

I’d lie in bed at night long after my fiancé had fallen asleep and scroll through before-and-after weight-loss photos, searching for bodies with similar proportions to mine. I would note the amount of time it took them to become smaller, gauging it against how much time I had until the wedding. At the time it felt like I was looking for inspiration, but looking back I think I just wanted to confirm what all those targeted ads had already told me: My body was a before, but wedding dresses were only for afters.

Part of me was angry that I had let so much time pass without trying to lose weight, and part of me was angry that I cared at all. I had spent a year successfully pushing away all these thoughts, yet here I was again—with the same thoughts of self-hatred and shame that had existed in my brain in high school and college. The same ugly thoughts that I’d had when I was a size 10 and a size 14: “If I was smaller, this would be better.” I had been 50 pounds lighter and telling myself the same thing—that a big family vacation would be more special if I were thinner. That my first day of college would be more thrilling if I had done more sit-ups. That a first date would go better if I had stuck with a diet. My actual, physical size had never really altered that specific thought at all.

One day about three months before our original wedding date, I found myself on those same Reddit pages, scrolling through photo after photo, panic slowly rising in my chest. I read a story from a man who said he had been fasting for more than two weeks, my eyes widening as I watched the anonymous commenters cheer him on. I suddenly felt all of it absorbing into my brain, feeding the old parts that told me the only acceptable goal was not to be a size 6 or 8 or 10, but simply to be smaller. It was a goal that had no end in sight, designed to stick with me forever, through every meal, every milestone.

I paused, took a deep breath, and vowed to myself then and there that I would instead spend my time feeding the parts of my brain that made me feel good and worthy. No more Reddit. No more before-and-afters. No more shame. And then COVID-19 happened.

Once the tears had been shed, vendors had been contacted, and postponement announcements had been made, I found myself in dozens of conversations with other brides who told me how happy they were to have more time to tone up for the wedding or get a few months to eat pizza again. The tone was light, but I knew they weren’t joking. I knew because I was having all the same thoughts too. A voice in the back of my head told me that this was my second chance—that it was time to pull up those Reddit threads again and let the before-and-after photos be my motivation for next year.

When I got engaged in 2018, I thought that refusing to diet or obsessively exercise before my wedding would be a challenge that resulted in me being unshakable when it came to how I felt about myself and my body. I certainly didn’t think it would be easy, but I did imagine that at the end of things, the urge to go back to disordered eating or shame would be gone. I was wrong about that. Now my wedding is another year away, and I know without doubt that I’ll have to actively go through every thought process I listed above—the dark thoughts, the pause, the readjustment—for not only the next 12 months but probably the rest of my life. But that’s okay with me now.

I used to think that the existence of all those negative thoughts made me flawed—that the only version of self-confidence I wanted was one that was unbreakable, steadfast through it all. Now I know that it’s the response to the thoughts that whisper “smaller equals better” that makes me strong. The pause. The readjustment. Doing it again and again for as long as I need to. It’s the only before-and-after I’m searching for these days, and that’s exactly how it should be.

Olivia Muenter is a Philadelphia-based freelance writer and digital content creator.

Originally Appeared on Glamour