You Snooze, You Lose
A sound slumber helps you shed pounds

Research suggests that a solid night’s sleep boosts levels of leptin, a hormone that suppresses hunger, which means you’ll be less inclined to overeat if you get your recommended seven to eight hours.

In addition to appetite suppression, catching enough ZZZs is the key to your overall health and helps to repair and energize your body and keep your emotions in check. And that’s important when you’re trying to plan the biggest day of your life.

Sleep deprivation affects your body-firming progress and disrupts your body’s normal ability to process and control important substances, like glucose, cortisol and thyroid hormones.

Translation? Lack of sleep directly affects how you look.

Here are two quick tips for a sound slumber:

Wear socks. Research confirms that cold feet keep you up and warm feet help you nod off more quickly. The reason? Warm toes mean your blood vessels are dilated and the blood flow’s healthy, which leads to sleepiness.

Turn off the lights. If you wake up during the night, don’t turn on the light. Remaining in the dark will help you get back to sleep sooner.

Routine exercise also helps you tire so that a sound night’s sleep is more likely. Be sure to follow a smart wedding workout plan that's designed to get you in shape, build muscle, burn fat, and yes, ensure a restful night.

What to Eat At a Wedding
Nutrition strategies to keep you buff after the big day

Time Out New York recently tapped me to share top tips on how to avoid over-eating at various summer festivities.

Conquering the buffet
Weddings can be a diet killer, so we asked a pro for tips on how to navigate big events with an even bigger smorgasbord of food and drinks.
By Rachel LeWinter

Eat before you go
Going to a wedding hungry is like going to the grocery store on an empty stomach: All of a sudden it’s like you’re... click here to read more.

Smart-Snacking Tips
Lose weight for your wedding with these simple strategies

If you’re committed to a fitness routine and you’re doing your best to eat right every day, you’re well on your way to a healthy body that looks and feels fabulous.

But if you’re stuck (you just can’t get the scale to budge) you might be sabotaging your efforts without even knowing it.

The hidden-calorie enemy? Snacks.

We turn to snacks as a mid-afternoon pick-me-up or as a nighttime staple after dinner. And the choices we make are usually where we go wrong.

There is hope, however, and such a thing as smart snacking. Here are some tips to keep you on track:

> Arm yourself with single-serving snack packs. Fortunately, manufacturers are giving consumers a grab-and-go single serving option of their goodies. These packages help you to keep your portions – and calories – under control. A few baked whole-wheat pita chips might be a healthy snack, but a 16-ounce bag of them certainly is not!

> Weigh your food. No. Really. Weigh it. The weight of food – not just the fat and calories – is what fills you up. So you can eat less and still feel satisfied during your mid-afternoon snack. Smart choices include oranges, strawberries, grapefruit and cantaloupe.

> When choosing fruit as your smart snack food of choice, follow the rainbow. Turns out the compounds, vitamins and minerals in produce that are good for you are also responsible for the pigments that give them their color.

> If carbs are calling, consult the GI to find low glycemic index foods. The reason? Low GI foods move glucose into your blood stream slowly to keep your energy level on an even keel and allow you to feel fuller longer between meals. Instead of white bread, choose whole wheat. Rather than pretzels, reach for popcorn. Try dried fruit instead of jelly beans. And splurge for a sweet potato instead of a baked potato.

Remember, too, that portion control is key to managing your weight and spurring weight loss if that’s your goal. And if you’re happy with your weight, these tips can help keep you on track.

Want secrets to smart snacking, losing weight, and toning up? You'll look and feel fabulous when you follow WeddingShape, the ultimate bridal body-sculpting plan.

Maximize Your Wedding Workout
Think you can melt fat from a trouble spot with a targeted exercise? Think again.

Spot reduction is one of the biggest fitness fairy tales out there.

Performing countless arm curls is not the best way to remove extra jiggle and create amazing arms to show off on your wedding day. Also, doing hundreds of crunches may strengthen your abdomen, but if you’re taking in more calories than you’re burning off, washboard abs will be covered in a layer of insulating fat!

Rather than choosing exercises that target individual muscles (like arm curls for biceps), you should perform movements that work many muscles at once.

A second tip for getting the most out of your time at the gym is to visualize your muscles as you exercise. For example, if you can picture how your deep abdominal muscles wrap around your waist like a girdle, it’s easier to work the entire muscle when you’re doing core work.

Next, improve your technique. Performing an exercise is one thing; doing it right is altogether different. Take an old-school ab exercise: the sit-up. You may be surprised to learn that this gym-class staple primarily works the muscles that cross in front of your hips. Unless you deliberately squeeze your midsection throughout the entire set, you’ll miss out on the belly-firming benefits.

There’s one in every gym … you know, the guy doing arm curls with too much weight. He’s arching his back, grunting, and jerking the bar back and forth like some uncoordinated, painful dance routine. Worse yet, he’s using just about every muscle except the ones he’s trying to work. The lesson? Maintain control. Perform every exercise deliberately.

Lastly, appreciate why some exercises are better than others. Traditional “body-sculpting” movements (again, like arm curls) that are performed in an isolated manner and involve only a handful of muscles, won’t give you a fit and defined physique. In short, the best exercises are the ones that recruit many muscles, and, as a result, involve lots of coordinated movement. A great example? Squats.

Need some help putting these tips into practice? Check out WeddingShape right here.