The Royal Family Is Supposedly Weighed Before and after Christmas Dinner - Why?
As if spending the holidays with your royal in-laws isn't stressful enough, Meghan Markle and her mum, Doria Ragland, will reportedly have to take part in a rather bizarre royal family tradition: Getting weighed before and after Christmas dinner.
This strange bit of royals trivia comes from Majesty editor Ingrid Seward and the new issue of Grazia. They claim the tradition dates back to King Edward VII's reign, where, apparently, King Edward VII was intensely concerned about people's health and whether or not they were eating enough on Christmas.
That's sweet and all, but these days the Royal family enjoys about three gigantic meals on Christmas day, so the scale seems highly unnecessary and maybe even a bit detrimental to truly enjoying Christmas in all its glory.
The Body Coach, aka Joe Wicks, agrees. He's spoken to WH before about how the scales, or 'sad step' as he calls them, have no place in the Christmas period.
His two cents on the bizarre Royal tradition? "Don’t stand on the scales before or after [party season], basically don't stand on them ever again. What's the point? Because you're only going to feel terrible.
"The weight is going to go up and it won't even all be body fat, a lot of it will be a bloated belly and water retention. Stick to taking progress pictures at the start and end of each month with measurements (that’s a real marker)."
"At the end of the day, we don’t judge people by how much they weigh. We don’t pick them up and weigh them, do we? So, who cares? You are who you are."
Plus, he's a fan of enjoying Christmas treats in all their glory-twiglets, Malteasar bunnies and all.
His festive food POA? "Christmas Eve onwards I crack open the Celebrations or Quality Street.
"Christmas day, I'm just grazing all day, having a big dinner and later waking up and having a load of cheese and twiglets and stuff. Oh, and ice cream.
"It’s the one day the year when I think you should just have a proper blow out.
"Don’t worry about it, it's not gonna make you fat."
Hear, hear. But back to details of the Royal weigh in. According to Seward and Grazia, the royals choose to continue the tradition using antique scales, but who knows whether the Queen herself shifts the scale weights back and forth. I guess no one has shouted, "Enough already!" after all these years, but it's 2018, so maybe Meghan and Doria will be those heroes.
Of course, this isn't a law put into place by Parliament, so if the rumour is actually true, the Christmas weighing tradition would be entirely voluntary and without risk of being sent to the stocks.
This will be Doria's first Christmas dinner with the family, which is a huge deal because Kate Middleton's parents have never even been invited, but this can't be what she had in mind, right?
