Waist trainers: New celebrity fitness trend

It’s the new accessory everyone wants to be wearing, but is the waist trainer really all it’s made out to be, and does it really give us that desirable hourglass shape?

It wasn’t so long ago that we saw Kim Kardashian and her sister Khloe showing off their curvaceous figures in their very own waist trainers. But now that even more celebrities are getting on board and following the trend, we have to wonder just how healthy it is to whittle down your waist this way.

We can understand your curiosity for this miracle belt, there’s no denying we were intrigued too. With a huge following of high profile celebrities endorsing the method, it’s easy to feel like we’re missing out on something amazing. So here we are trying to decide if the waist trainers could be your new best friend or more likened to wearing a painful, medieval rib-crushing corset.

The waist-cinching belts are designed to quite literally train your waist to be smaller, thus creating the slightly unrealistic Disney princess silhouette that so many of us are dying for. They work by putting pressure on the waist in order to change its shape over time and are also said to “speed up” the weight loss process and “strengthen your core” if worn during work-outs.

Doctors say there’s no proof that the waist training corset will permanently alter your body’s shape. Some even say your body will return to its natural form as soon as you take it off. From a medical perspective, the risks far outweigh any aesthetic benefits; from rib, organ and metabolic damage as well as rib breakages and small lung collapses, through to the much less serious problems such as skin chafing.

We have to admit, this had us a little less obsessed with the idea of waist training.

Amy Bailey