Since social media’s humble uprisings with MySpace and Facebook the generations of teenagers during the 2000’s and 2010’s have been obsessed with personal online image. Online, we are completely different people with filters to cover our flaws and hundreds of people motivating our self esteem through likes. This includes myself, of course it feels good to get a bunch of likes on a selfie, you spent all that time trying to find the right pose and lighting. But social media has also been harmful. Many celebrities and Instagram stars have raved about beauty products that can make you skinny, healthy, and happy. But are these items all worth the hype? Last week we explored Teatoxes and found out they were a bust, now let’s move on to the next biggest fitness wave: waist trainers.

Celebrities pose in dozens of selfies claiming that these waist trainers have helped them during workouts and in everyday life; simply wearing them for certain periods of time helps essentially ‘train’ your waist into an hourglass shape. Now the question is, does it really work? Is it worth the hype?

The answer of course is no. Wearing a waist trainer will not cause your body to magically turn into that of Kim Kardashian. Dr. Mary Jane Minkin told Women's Health Magazine that “Medically, it doesn't make sense that cinching your waist tightly will make it permanently smaller. Once you take the garment off, your body will return to its usual shape.” Here’s a link to the full article to read more about Dr. Minkin’s professional opinion of waist trainers. That sucks right? You wear a waist trainer for up to 14 hours a day but once you take it off your body goes back to normal? Sounds like false advertising to me.

Also if you think just wearing a waist trainer is bad don’t try working out with one. Waist trainer’s actually restrict your movement quite a bit which can lead to multiple injuries when working out. People think because it makes you sweat more that you’re losing more weight especially around the stomach area. You guessed it, this isn’t true. Just because you’re sweating more because something is tightly pressing your stomach in, doesn’t mean you are losing more weight. It also restricts your breathing and if you have it pulled tight enough it can even lead to rib damage. Think about it, these are basically the corsets women used to wear centuries ago that caused them to pass out from lack of oxygen. Do you really think waist trainer’s are such a great idea in this century?

So are waist trainers worth the hype? No, of course not. If you want to lose weight the only option is healthy eating and exercise. There’s, unfortunately, no easy way out. My advice, don’t torture yourself with these corsets, its 2016 not 1810.