Wedding Gown Challenge 2009 - Of Course It Fits..!

Love makes us fat...

Marriage makes us fat...

Our friends make us fat...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've read all the reports. Truth is, we make ourselves fat. Of course, industry couldn't be more helpful. What with their adding sugar to everything so food plays tricks on us: Cravings anyone? Feeling hungry when maybe you're not really hungry? Digging that dopamine high?

It's damn hard to not get fat these days. We're hardwired to eat all food available and to store fat. Otherwise our DNA wouldn't have survived eons of scarcity. But today's survival skill is surviving abundance. With processed foods--I mean ingestible entertainment--formulated, packaged and marketed to bypass all reason, it takes all the logic you can muster to override your neuro-chemical responses driving you to Dunkin' Donuts at 3am...

Kelly Brownell at Yale's Rudd Center says it takes "motivation" and a "willingness" to control these impulses and make healthful lifestyle choices instead. I agree. When it's "no thanks" as tiramisu is offered... or the face of every runner along the path...I'm pretty sure I'm witnessing pure determination.

Were you at a healthy weight when you hit your twenties? Are you still at about the same weight? You should be. (Weight lifters and the like get a free pass on this.) Whether it's your acid wash jeans, Bugle Boys, or whatever you wore the first night you got drunk (legally), those clothes should still fit--your body if not your current sense of style.

America is a collective 5 Billion pounds overweight, the average adult is 23 pounds overweight, and most couples put on 25 to 30 pounds after the first few years of marriage.

If you have the determination, motivation and willingness, those numbers don't have to describe you. As for me, I'm celebrating the 5th Annual Wedding Gown Challenge today. More than 12 years and 2 children later, the gown still fits, Ba-bee..!