THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT WAIST TRAINERS
Waist trainers are HOT these days! With so many celebs jumping onboard the craze, waist training has taken a front seat all over social media and TV.
Now, if you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I am very against waist training. As a trainer, pilates instructor, and holistic nutritionist I am a BIG advocate for using science backed methods (like strength training and nutrition to cinch the waist that I use these methods in my online program!)
With that said and after many of months of hearing about waist trainers, I’ve decided it’s time to demystify the hype around these things!
The Truth About Waist Trainers: What Are They?
Waist trainers are essentially girdles made of fabric worn around the torso for long periods of time (up to 24 hours of each day). Exactly as their name implies they are meant to “train” your waist so it “shrinks and reshapes”. The idea is to pull the waist trainer in every few days in hopes of reshaping your waist into a smaller version of it. Waist trainers are typically made of heavy fabric or leather… some come with laces that are pulled in tighter every few days.
Waist trainers and girdles (think medical girdles worn after pregnancies) have been around for a very long. They have been a part fashion and used in medical setting for centuries! However the recent modernized version of these things, took a spot in the limelight in the past few years, when a few celebrities started endorsing these products (… in exchange of large sums of money!)
These days, you cannot scroll through your social media without seeing at least one post about “waist trainers”. For me, waist trainers became to the forefront when some of my HG gils started wearing them to our fitness classes. Thanks to celebrity endorsements, waist trainers have become increasingly popular and trendy!
What’s The Hype And Is It Too Good To Be True?
Waist trainers promise to “cinch the waist”, give you an “hourglass figure”, “shrink your waistline” and get rid of belly fat… all without the hard work of exercising or dieting! WOAH!!! Sounds AWESOME right? Wear a fabric thing around your waist real tight and get a flat stomach? Sign us up! I am SOLD!
Unfortunately, the hype around these products are very much, well, hyped up and too good to be true! Let me tell you, it’s next to IMPOSSIBLE to shrink or reshape your waist WITHOUT a proper nutrition and exercise program! Or without some sort of surgical intervention! Why? Because the science simply does not add up!
The human body has its own natural girdle… and you guessed it, it’s called MUSCLE! Our organs are surrounded by tissue, including the transverse abdominus, the rectus abdominis, the internal and external obliques, erector spinae and lumbar muscles in the lower back. There are lots of hard muscles at work keeping us upright and everything together!
It just so happens that we also have another type of tissue called fat covering the muscles. You cannot change the shape of your torso or waist simply by wearing a piece of fabric around it. Nor can you reduce the amount of fat cells or fat tissue in your body by wearing a piece of very tight fabric. Science just doesn’t work that way! In fact wearing such things can be dangerous as it suffocates your organs and can cause heat stroke, and a permanent unhealthy shift in your organs. In order to shrink your fat cells, you need to build lean tissue to stimulate your metabolism and adapt a healthy eating regimen (like the one here) that reduces fat tissue!
Wearing waist trainers also undermines your muscles as you inherently start relying on it to keep your core engaged as opposed to properly engaging your abdominal muscles when working.
Is There A HEALTHY Way To Cinch Your Waist?
My best advice for those of you looking to cinch in your waist is to start exercising using a solid plan (like my trainwithlyzabeth program) and eat well! Learn how to properly engage your core muscles (something I teach at my Hourglass Workout girls and in my online program)! Adapt a healthy nutrition plan and last but not least be CONSISTENT! It’s that or permanent surgical intervention like removing two ribs from torso!
Simply put, forget the hype around waist trainers! Choose to hit the gym with a good workout program and eat well … soon enough you WILL see a smaller waist!
