Make Sure Your Gown Still Fits!

Weddings and Women's Obesity: MeMe Roth Leads 2nd Annual Wedding Gown Challenge, Friday, August 4

--"Women Should Fit Into Their Wedding Gowns Year After Year," Says Anti-Obesity Advocate MeMe Roth--

New York, NY -- August 4, 2006 -- http://weddinggownchallenge.blogspot.com/ --While most U.S. adults succumb to today's obesity epidemic and brides-to-be across the country starve themselves into unhealthy and unrealistic weights for just one day--their wedding day--The Wedding Gown Challenge marks its second year. The Wedding Gown Challenge encourages women to enter into marriage at a healthy weight and maintain that weight for a lifetime rather than perpetuating the time-honored tradition of starving oneself leading up to the wedding and then packing on the pounds during the honeymoon.

"Most women I know commit fraud on their wedding days--they weigh-in for the walk down the aisle with no expectation of maintaining that weight year after year," said anti-obesity advocate, MeMe Roth. "Instead of starving for weeks on end to look good for the wedding album, women should enter marriage at a healthy weight and with the full commitment to remain fit for life."

Today, there is little expectation that women will hover near their wedding day size. However, the facts according to Yale New Haven Hospital, and others, is that women need only blame five to 10 pounds on pregnancy. Additionally, gaining a modest 10-20 pounds after age 18 materially compromises one's health. According to the New England Journal of Medicine and reported by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), gaining merely 10-20 pounds after age 18 increases your chance of premature death by 15%.

"The only way to combat obesity is to not get fat in the first place--studies show once you're overweight, your body works to maintain the highest weight you reach, making it that much harder to be fit," said Ms. Roth. "The Wedding Gown Challenge gives us a chance to 'check-in' with ourselves atleast once a year and keep an eye on our waistlines."

HOW?
It's time to break the obesity cycle starting with the Wedding Gown Challenge:
· Forget bride-to-be boot camps. Instead, make healthy choices about food and portion size.
· Move it! Sports, walking, playing--do whatever it takes to move your body at least 10,000 steps a day. (That's about five miles.)
· Be healthy on your wedding day, and most importantly, do what it takes to remain healthy.
· Refuse to use your life as an excuse for obesity: stress, pregnancy, depression, genetics, metabolism. There is an infinite list of circumstances that make weight gain easy; however, it is up to only one person to live fit or fat.
· Finally, if you have children, rear the next generation of brides-to-be into ahealthy adulthood by both modeling and providing a healthy lifestyle.

WHEN?
Friday, August 4, women across the country are pulling out and putting on their gowns and taking part in the 2nd Annual Wedding Gown Challenge. Many will gather together with their girlfriends, husbands and children for moral support, and some will face their gowns solo.

The Wedding Gown Challenge is in response to the deluge of data, advice and warnings regarding obesity. "Women are at the center of the obesity epidemic. One in three of us is not just overweight, but obese. Women make more than 90% of food-buying decisions. It's on us to stop the surge in obesity," added Ms. Roth.

ABOUT MEME ROTH
Writer, Speaker and Anti-Obesity Advocate MeMe Roth is host and organizer of the Wedding Gown Challenge, an annual event in support of women entering marriage at a healthy weight--and maintaining it. In addition to convincing the masses that obesity is abuse, Ms. Roth campaigns to eliminate junk food from schools, believing the school environment should not encourage children to consume junk food as a means for fundraising.

Ms. Roth is dedicated to sounding the alarm against obesity and offering advice to break the obesity cycle. Ms. Roth's motivation? Being born into a long lineof obesity, having children of her own and fighting the battle of the bulge like everyone else. Ms. Roth's larger agenda? Brain/Body/Libido. "Let's re-tool the image of 'mom' and live a lifestyle free of excuses."

As an anti-obesity advocate, Ms. Roth's efforts to eliminate junk food from schools, eradicate Secondhand Obesity™ (obesity handed down from one generation to the next, as well as from citizen to citizen), and to celebrate women committed to remaining fit have been featured on FOX's O'Reilly Factor w/ Bill O'Reilly, Your World with Neil Cavuto, CBS's The Early Show,The New York Times, New York Magazine, The New York Post, Playboy Magazine, The New Jersey Star-Ledger, TimeOut New York, Big Apple Parent, WABCRadio, 106.7 LiteFM,Q104.3, Parents Magazine, Vicinity Magazine, Suburban Essex Magazine, School Administrator, American School Board Journal, The Winnipeg Sun, UPN Channel 9 News, News Target, Baristanet.com, WCRN Boston, BigFatBlog, Nippon TV, The Associated Press and Health Magazine.