The Best Girdles That Flatten Your Stomach In 2024

The pressure to look good these days can be quite intense, especially for women.It seems like everyone nowadays has the much sought after ‘coke’ bottle or hourglass shape.

The great thing is that, these days you can accentuate and flatten your shape using shapewear, cincher and body suit. No one is perfect, and even the most attractive celebrities tend to modify their body shape with shapewear. Here, we will look at how girdles can make your tummy look slimmer and help to flatten it.

The Logic Behind The Gird’ - How Can Girdles Flatten Your Stomach?

Girdles are tight, body-hugging garments that cover the lower abdomen, hips and thigh area to give it better shape and ‘flatten’ it. Can a girdle help flatten your stomach? Well… It slightly matches corsets and can give the illusion of a flat stomach, but doesn’t directly or permanently flatten the stomach. Girdles usually work as a shapewear to make your body look slimmer.

However, it uses compressive fabric around the core and lower abdomen, which gives holds in any body fat in that area—making it look slimmer and flatter. It can really transform your lower belly and waistline, thus, slimming your body properly.

Girdles can also be worn for medical reasons other than using it for tummy control. For example, the compression garments can help reduce swelling and improve posture while your body recovers from major trauma like surgery.

How Can I Maximize Results When Wearing a Girdle?

While girdles can be a great body shaper and help boost your body confidence, you can’t rely on girdles alone to flatten the stomach without any weight loss.

Ultimately, you want your results to be more permanent and sustainable. For that, you need to make changes to your lifestyle.

Have a Good Diet

They say that abs are made in the kitchen, and there is so much truth to this. You can't out-exercise a bad diet, you need firm control. It is much easier to lose a muffin top or lighten some pooch by sticking to a good diet.

Here are some diet tips to follow:

• Cut out the sugar and refined oils from things like fries and donuts.
• Swap out refined carbs for healthy complex carbs like wholegrain bread and grains
• Eat plenty of fibre and protein, which will make you feel full for longer.
• Drink plenty of water—this will also keep you full
• Avoid eating too much—not only does it add calories, but it will also cause bloating, which will be uncomfortable with a girdle.

Lead a Healthy Lifestyle

Apart from a good diet, leading an active and healthy lifestyle is a must. This doesn’t mean you have to be a gym rat and be able to run 20 mile marathons. It can be as simple as walking instead of driving to the grocery store.

The key is to keep yourself moving and don’t get stuck in a rut. Leading a sedentary lifestyle—where you are seated for long periods of time, doesn’t just make you gain fat, it also makes that fat more stubborn.

It is well-known that the type of fat found in people that lead active lifestyles are easier to burn than those found in sedentary people.

There is no point in wearing shapewear if you have a lot of stubborn fat. You will always have to wear one, and you won’t see any long term results. So, a tummy control shapewear should be used to supplement a good diet and exercise regimen rather than replacing it.

Another thing to note is that girdles are ‘quick fixes’, meaning their results are temporary. If you’re not careful, wearing shapewear over prolonged periods can make your abs weaker. This is because all the work your core would normally have to do is now being done by the girdle or shapewear.

So, it is very crucial that you do core exercises to maintain core abdominal muscles. Here are some great core exercises you can do for the first time:

• Pushups
• Bird dog
• Planks
• Mountain climbers
• Bicycle crunches
• Leg raises
• V-ups or V-sits
• Russian twists
• Squats
• Deadlifts

Get The Right Size

Girdles and most shapewear are made from very compressive fabrics. So, getting the wrong size can not only be painful and uncomfortable, but also potentially dangerous. It can cause breathing issues and problems with blood circulation.

It is essential to refer to the sizing guides provided by the brand before buying one. These days, most brands offer customer service help when choosing a size. Here is the sizing guide from Luxx Curves.

For best results, take your measurements early in the morning before you’ve had breakfast because that’s when you have a relatively flat stomach. This will be your true measurement.

Beware of the material

Since you will be wearing these body hugging girdles for a long time, you want to make sure that your skin doesn’t react badly to the material. A lot of shapewear these days are made from synthetic fabrics like nylon and are not breathable enough.

Avoid foods that cause bloating

Bloating can not only damage your body confidence, but it can also cause discomfort when wearing girdles. There are certain types of food that will cause bloating for most people:

• Sodas and carbonated drinks
• Refined carbs with little fiber—refined wheat foods
• Oily, fried foods with little to no fiber.
• Processed dairy items, especially those with sugar

Even some healthy foods like onions, broccoli, brussels sprouts and cabbage have been linked to bloating. It is best to limit your intake of these foods, rather than cutting them out all together.

Are There Any Alternatives For Girdles Out There?

As mentioned before, girdles are mainly ‘quick fixes’ with temporary results. Girdles do not permanently flatten your stomach in the long run.

It’s a great shapewear as it temporarily squishes your belly fat, so that you can fit into that dress for an event. They are also not meant to be worn during exercise.

Here are some alternatives to girdles you can try out:

Waist Trainers

Waist trainers are special garments that are designed to ‘train’ your waist over the period of a few weeks to become flatter and smaller. They also help to shape your waistline, so that it will make you curvy and give you a super waist to hip ratio.

Waist trainers are your best bet if you want to be curvy and shape your waist in the long term. The results are more permanent, so your waist will still be slim even after you take off the waist trainer.

Waist trainers incorporate more rigid materials than regular shapewear like Spandex, like flexi-steel or acrylic bones. This boning structure builds up a strong ‘skeleton’ around your waist, which will be better able to withstand the pressure from your belly fat.They are meant to be worn for several hours per day (maximum of eight hours). Over a few weeks, your waist will gradually slim down. Once you’ve lost a few inches, you then move down to a smaller size waist trainer and repeat the process for another few weeks. Check out Luxx Curves’ comprehensive guide to waist training.

Corsets

Corsets are the most extreme option out of the list of alternatives. Corsets use very rigid steel bones to constrict your waist.

They typically use laces to tighten and adjust the corset. This gives you a more extreme accentuation of the waist, but is also very tedious to put on.

Corsets have also been around the longest. Corsets were frequently worn in Victorian time and during the Renaissance in France. It was very fashionable back then to exaggerate the hips as much as possible with huge skirts and a very tight bodice on the dresses.. Back then, corsets used whale bones instead of steel bones for the ‘skeleton’.

In modern times, corsets can be made from very different materials—such as lace, mesh, silk, satin, etc. They can be worn over clothing or on its own, and often worn as costumes.

Because corsets typically have a more rigid structure than waist trainers, they are not as discreet under clothing. So, waist trainers, girdles or under bust corsets are better options, if you are looking for something more discreet.

Health concerns over corsets

Over recent years, corsets have received a very bad rep from the medical community. Doctors are concerned that the extremely tight and rigid structure of corsets, can lead to a multitude of health issues such as:

• Indigestion or acid reflux, as corsets can push on your stomach and cause its contents to move back up.
• Breathing issues as corsets can compress the rib cage, not allowing you to breathe in properly.
• Issues with blood circulation due to the tightness.
• Damage to internal organs as the corsets can displace or squish them.

This is why waist trainers are better options to corsets. With waist trainers, there is a limit to how much you can tighten the garment. Since corsets often use laces for tightening, you will always be tempted to overtighten.

Waist trainers also use flexible steel bones as opposed to the rigid steel bones you find in corsets. This allows better breathability and flexibility.

Fajas

Fajas are like the middle man between a girdle and a waist trainer. Their design is very similar to a girdle, and covers the entirety of the abs, hips and thighs. However, they offer a little more compression than regular girdles, which are basically shapewear.

Fajas originated in Latin America, and have been worn for decades by Latin women to wear after things like surgery and pregnancy. Their purpose is to compress the body to reduce swelling and help the skin tighten and recover faster.

During pregnancy, a lot of women go through diastasis recti. This is when your core muscles separate to allow more space for the growing baby. This can make a woman’s waist lose definition and appear more ‘boxy’. So, fajas are worn so that the compression around the waist can help correct this condition, and get your body shape back to normal.

Summary - Are Girdles Good For Flattening Your Stomach?

To sum it all up, can a girdle help flatten your stomach? The answer is that, yes, it can help flatten the stomach—temporarily. Girdles or any other compression shapewear are basically ‘quick fixes’ to a more permanent problem.

Just like how you own bras and lingeries, girdles can be added to the collection. They are great for giving you an hourglass figure and curvier silhouette. You can choose to wear it at special occasions or to use it after postpartum. You can use these under a tank top or any undergarment. However, the moment you take the waist shaper off, your body goes back to normal.

Girdles are great for giving you a smoother and curvier silhouette, making sure you dazzle in that evening gown. However, the moment you take it off, your body goes back to normal.

So, to make the most of your girdles, you need to think long term. This means changing your diet and lifestyle for the better. Cut down on processed junk food, refined carbs and sugar. Get active and move to keep that belly fat at bay.

If you want a more long term option to girdles that will give you permanent results, waist trainers are your best bet. They gradually change the size and shape of your waist over the course of a few weeks. Once you take it off, your body will still retain that shape.