The great nose-feeding tube throwdown

Last week, I linked to an article on my Facebook page about doctor in Florida who's offering a feeding tube crash diet. Patients pay $1500 to have a tube shoved up their nose, through which 800 calories of protein and fat are slow dripped into their stomachs, forcing hardcore ketosis and severe weight loss. The angle is that this is something brides-to-be can do to drop weight fast to fit into their wedding dress.

I've read a lot of rumbling that this should be illegal. I don't know if I agree with that. I'm all for controlled fasting or cleansing for spiritual purposes or just to help clean the junk out of your system, so it would be hypocritical to say weight loss fasting shouldn't be allowed. However, I do think doing it purely for weight loss is complete crap and I question the ethics of any doctor who would administer something like this.

Crash diets don't work. They may cause weight loss in the short term, but it all comes back, given they don't teach dieters how to eat right, so they return to old habits and gain the weight back.

But the short term is what Americans tend to worry about most, so that's probably why this trend will continue until someone dies or goes insane and sues the doctor who shoved the tube up their snout. Litigation for things like this, BTW, is a practice I find equally repellent. I don't care what the guy on the other end of the tube is telling you; If you're willingly ramming anything up your nose, it's your duty to research it and if it goes wrong, that's your problem.

Regarding this perfect wedding thing, here's some advice from a former groom: I don't care about those "last ten pounds." If you "look fat" in that wedding dress, you picked the wrong one. You're paying thousands of dollars for the damn thing, so pick one that's flattering. That's the entire point of picking a piece of clothing you're only going to wear once. And any guy who tells you otherwise - any guy who wants you to go on a nose tube diet before the big day - is an ASSHOLE and you should put some serious thought into marrying him.

That's not to say I'm not superficial. In fact, I'm deeply, deeply superficial, but my superficiality is the longterm kind. I take care of my body and, if I ever settle down again, I know I'll need to be with someone who does the same. But that doesn't mean she'll be able to cram into a size 2 wedding dress. It means decades of exercising together, having hot sex together, eating healthy meals together, having hot sex together, and being obesity-related-disease free together.

Oh, and also hot sex.

So if you really want to have an impact on your marriage, don't pop a tube up your proboscis. Think in the long term, eat right, and exercise. A fifty-year wedding anniversary with 5-10 irrelevant extra pounds is so much more sexy than looking like a lollypop in white on your wedding day.