Hurray, you’re engaged! Have you started your pre-wedding weight loss regime yet? YOU HAVEN’T!? Oh my goodness, there isn’t a moment to lose –  make sure you read this before it’s too late!

1. Look in the mirror everyday and tell yourself you are beautiful and incredibly blessed to be marrying the love of your life. Even if you don’t believe what you’re saying at first and you feel utterly stupid even thinking about doing it, do it anyway! If you fill you brain (and your mouth!) with positive, lovely words about yourself rather than ugly and nasty ones, you’ll eventually start to believe them.

2. Realise that losing weight will not alter how you feel about yourself long term. Sure, you might get into a smaller size wedding dress, but you’ll still have the same insecurities. Instead of fixating on how you can make yourself thinner, become obsessive about working on your self-esteem and confidence instead. The results will last much longer.

3. There are no quick fixes or miracles cures. As alluring as it might sound, you won’t undo thirty years of bad choices, behaviours and habits in thirty days. So take all those magazine articles promising that shit and throw them in the bin. Or better still, have a sacrificial burning in the back garden.

4. Talk to your fiancé about how you feel. Let them reassure you that they love and want to marry you the way you look NOW (and they will, I promise!)

5. Rapid weight-loss is almost always followed by rapid weight gain. Realise that even if you do lose weight for your wedding you’ll likely end up putting it back on afterwards when you revert back to your normal eating habits. Who wants to look back at their wedding photos and think “Gosh, that doesn’t even look like me”, or “UGH I was so thin then, now I’m just a fat wife”? If you do end up losing weight then putting it back on you’ll only end up feeling bad about yourself again – it’s a vicious circle!

6. Wanting to get healthy and look after your body is a good thing, it’s not something to be discouraged. However my only hope is that you’re doing this because you want to make yourself feel better generally, not because you’re punishing yourself for being ‘bad’.

7. Take the money you’re planning to spend on that faddy diet plan and splurge on something extra amazing for your wedding. How about your dream photographer or a baller honeymoon!?

8. Buy a wedding dress that fits you. There is nothing worse than adding to the inevitable pre-wedding pressure with the worry about whether you’re going to be able to zip up your dress or not! If you do lose weight, then great! You can find a seamstress to take it in, but don’t set yourself up for failure by trying to reach impossible goals.

9. If you want to feel better in your body take up some gentle exercise, cut out the crap, drink less wine (that’s my problem!) and you will probably lose a few pounds. Wanting to lose weight to feel good about yourself is not a bad thing, but starving yourself will only make you feel terrible.

10. Two words: wedding cake.

Beautiful girl, you are a gorgeous, wondrous, unique and magical creature. There is no-one else on this planet like you. Your fiancé loves you FOR YOU and your self worth has absolutely nothing to do with your dress size, your pot belly or your bingo wings. The human body is an incredible machine, just look at all it’s done for you! It’s been working hard since the day you were born – keeping you alive, getting you from A to B, powering it’s way through every single day – so give it a goddamn break if it’s looking a little ropey around the edges!

I don’t want you to beat yourself up about wanting to lose weight, goodness knows you don’t need me making you feel worse about yourself, but please don’t fall into the trap of thinking a fad diet will solve all your problems or that thinner automatically equals better.

You are all so beautiful. Whether you’re a size 6 or a size 26, remember you are marrying someone who loves you unconditionally – yes, every last inch of you.