Does waist training really work?

It is the newest craze in the Kenyan beauty and fitness scene. It promises an instant flat tummy and a more defined waist. If you are patient enough to wear it for hours at a time, it promises to permanently reshape your body and get rid of inches around your waist.

It’s called ‘waist training’, and it is the gradual process of reshaping the waist by tying a tightly-laced corset around the waist and lower ribs. It’s sounds effortless and it promises you that permanent hourglass figure. Almost sounds too good to be true. Is it? Saturday Magazine set out to find out if it if it actually works.

Kagwiria Mworia sells waist trainers. She admits that when she first heard about it, she was a bit sceptical. “I was working as a consultant in the US and my job involved a lot of travel. This meant having all my meals at hotels. I had added a lot of weight and my best friend who had been waist training for a while started hinting that I needed to do something,” Kagwiria recalls.

She didn’t believe in it but to get her friend out of her hair, she bought a waist trainer. One Monday morning 15 months ago, she gave it a try. She kept at it and in five months, she claims that she had lost seven and a half inches around her waist and 20 kilos off her body. Today, she runs what she terms as her accidental business, selling waist trainers across five African countries.

THE EXPERIENCE

When we pay Kagwiria a visit at her showroom, there are half a dozen women waiting to be fitted. The waist trainer has been so well received here that she is struggling to keep supplies in stock.

Her clientele varies: She has new mums, women with back problems and women seeking to look better. Her youngest client is 18 and the oldest 62.She stocks the special latex waist cincher and the prices range from Sh9, 500 to Sh15, 000 depending on the design.

“The waist cincher is made of a tough latex material which sucks your stomach in and increases temperatures around your midsection.

With consistent use, the thermal effect leads to fat loss in that area,” she claims. However there are no independent, scientifically researched studies to prove this.

“There is also the steel boned corset which is laced with steel rods,” she continues. “This one works by reshaping the waist by pushing in the floating ribs. These are the two lowest ribs which aren’t connected to the breast bone and are thus flexible. I do not stock these ones because I do not believe in reshaping the bones or that a grown woman was meant to have a 15-inch waist,” she says.

To get a feel of how one can get along with their day with a corset tightly laced on their abdomen, she fits me with an under bust latex waist cincher.

While it was a struggle to get it on, it felt surprisingly comfortable once it was laced on. It lies flat underneath your clothes, gives one that instant hourglass figure and a great upright posture just as it promises. Can these benefits be permanent?

Waist training is hardly a new concept. It dates back hundreds of years to Victorian England when dainty waists were prized by women. Kenyan women, especially in the rural areas have for years tightly tied lessos around their bellies to get back into shape after birth.

Joshua Orwaru, a physiotherapist at Premier Rehab Centre in Nairobi, agrees that the back support that a waist trainer gives will improve your posture. He observes that with a new mother, the waist trainer can give adequate support and improve core stability as the abdominal muscles spring back into place. He is however doubtful about it giving permanent effects.

“If you stop wearing it, your body should take back its natural shape after a while. It however might help with weight loss by making the wearer eat less. The tight compression should reduce food volume intake,” he says.

In retrospect, Kagwiria agrees that the waist trainer did help with her food portions. “The psychological effect also counts for the effects that you see,” says Nancy Kwamboka, who owns Body Shaper’s Corset, an online shop selling body shapers and waist trainers.

Nancy first tried the waist trainer a year-and-a-half ago following the delivery of her child. She had gained a lot of weight and she didn’t like how her tummy looked.

She took to wearing the waist trainer all day long. “When you are wearing a waist trainer and you look in the mirror and like what you see, you naturally start eating better to keep your new shape. When you have it on, it is a constant reminder of your present shape and this motivates you to want to keep this shape,” she observes.

Kagwiria terms waist training as a gradual process of waist reduction whose effects are pegged on how consistent you are. “It is not a substitute to healthy eating and exercise, but I am proof that if you get a quality waist trainer and you are disciplined about it, you will get the waist size that you want. It is a lifestyle change. Just like dieting or exercise, if you stop doing it, your body goes back to its initial shape,” she says.

“It took some getting used to,” Kagwiria admits, sentiments that are shared by Jackline Wangeci a travel agent who has been waist training for seven months now.

The first day Jackline wore a waist trainer, she kept it on for only three hours. She built on the hours and at the end of the week, she could wear it for eight hours straight. Now, if she accidentally falls asleep on the couch in her living room in the evenings, she can comfortably sleep through the night with the waist trainer still on.

“It worked for me, even when I don’t have it on, I have had people remark about how small my waist looks. Get a fitted waist trainer that is your size and get good quality.

The low-quality ones roll up underneath your clothes giving you a lumpy look. Most important, pay attention to the signals that your body is sending you,” she advises.

In addition to the instant slimming effect, waist training done alongside exercise and a healthy diet appears to have other positive benefits. What are the health risks? Dr Jonathan Wala, a physician and nephrologist at The Aga Khan University Hospital, is of the view that the waist cinching trend, especially with the steel boned corset, could be a medical risk. If it pushes your stomach in too tightly, you will have a hard time digesting food because of the pressure and this could give you acidity. If one goes to extremes, it could cause an organ shift which will make you less tolerant of certain foods.

“If it is causing you discomfort or if you are having trouble breathing then take it off. Diabetes patients, especially whose skin bruises easily, should be (especially) cautious,” he counsels.

According to Joshua Orwaru, the physiotherapist, if done in moderation and alongside exercise and healthy eating, one may be able to enjoy the benefits.

“You still need to exercise. If you waist train without exercising, it means that the abdominal muscles are not active.

When they are weakened for a prolonged period of time, they waste.

This way, you end up weakening the core muscles which is the opposite of what you set out to do.” Ultimately, though, waist training is no substitute for a healthy lifestyle.