Look Slimmer Instantly

Look Slimmer Instantly

How To Look Slimmer Instantly
by: Susan Lockhart

Did you know that the clothing styles you choose can have a major impact on your apparent weight? Choosing the right clothes for your body shape and makes all the difference. Here are 10 simple tricks you can use to look slimmer almost instantly!

You can lose approximately 3-5 lbs (1-2kgs) with each point listed below. Choose a maximum of 5 points per outfit:

1. Vertical Lines 
A vertical design line that causes the eye to run uninterrupted up and down the body has an incredible power to make you appear slimmer and taller. Vertical stripes in particular are great at making you appear slimmer, but be careful with the stripes you choose. The wider the stripe and the further apart they are spaced, the less impact they have. Thin to medium stripes placed close together have the most impact.

2. Stand Up Straight 
Simple good posture will always make you appear slimmer. Standing correctly makes your clothes hang properly and elongates the body. This can take practice but it is a great habit to get into, both for your appearance and your health.

3. Underwear 
Wearing great foundation garments will help to keep everything firm and in place. Just wearing the correct size and style of bra for your body can do wonders, so get professionally fitted at least once a year or more often if you are losing or gaining weight, pregnant or breastfeeding. Also, wearing a light, loose camisole under your clothes can help to hide stomach rolls.

4. Colour 
Wearing dark colours over a figure challenge can help to visually reduce your size. It doesn't have to be black; charcoal, navy and chocolate all work well too. Just make sure the colour that is framing your face comes from your best colour palette. There is no point looking slimmer if you also look washed out and tired.

If you are short, wearing dark colours on the lower half of your body can give the appearance of extra height. Keeping colour contrast to a minimum also helps, so if you wear skirts, choose hosiery that gently blends in colour with your shoes and hemline.

5. Fabric 
As a general rule you want to avoid wearing bulky, textured fabrics over your largest area. Instead, choose fine to medium textured fabrics that drape and skim over your body, rather than cling. Also remember to choose matte (non-shiny) fabrics. Shiny fabrics like satin catch the light and will show up every lump and bump.

6. Shape 
Lots of women go for very loose clothing with the hope of hiding extra weight. This can have the opposite affect and make you appear larger than you actually are. Instead choose clothes with some shape and make the most of your figure.

7. Accessories 
Wearing an accessory high on your body can be a great way to attract attention away from a figure challenge. A scarf, brooch or great earrings can act as a focal point, drawing the eye up to your face. Always choose medium sized accessories - anything chunky can add weight and anything too fine will disappear.

8. Prints & Patterns 
If you are overweight chances are you avoid prints and patterns, however you can wear them successfully. Always choose prints with a dark rather than light background. You should also choose prints where the repeat is not obvious and there is very little or no background colour showing. This will confuse the eye and visually reduce weight.

9. Shoes 
The chunkier the shoe and more rounded the toe, the heavier you will appear. The best shoes for reducing apparent weight have a thin sole, medium to high heel and reasonably pointed toe. Stay away from mules and ankle straps, instead go for shoes that show more of your foot, creating a long line and visually elongating your legs.

10. Simplicity 
Above all, keep your total appearance simple and elegant.

A personal image consultation will show you exactly which colours and styles of clothes are right for you, but these simple tricks will help to you look slimmer, instantly!


About The Author
Susan Lockhart is a leading Image Consultant in Brisbane, Australia and owner of Synergy Image Consulting. Learn how to make the most of your appearance and dress for success, no matter what size, age or shape you are. Get professional advice on colour, dressing for your body shape, bridal wear, grooming and more. Consultations for men and women. Visit http://www.synergyimage.com.au for more information

Your Thai Girl

AD MEN TODAY ARE WRONG ON BODY SIZE

Susie Orbach writes on why Lynne Featherstone was right to celebrate curvaceous Christina Hendricks as a role model

was held up as an alternative to the skinny aesthetic by equalities minister Lynne Featherstone. Photograph: Frank Ockenfels/AMC

Pity those who are rubbishing the equalities minister Lynne Featherstone's efforts to influence the style industry with her comments that Christina Hendricks, voluptuous star of Mad Men, is an ideal female role model. They must be denying what they know about the body-issue problems affecting their mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts or friends. We can see an unconscious pull to dismiss the initiative by telling it as a story of the minister's personal prejudices, her own desire to see curvaceous bodies become the new visual musak.

Of course that wasn't Featherstone's point at all. She was relishing Hendricks as a refreshing counterpoint to the homogeneity of female body image that we have been receiving and transmitting and attempting to emulate for several decades. She wasn't arguing for a new form of body tyranny.

Enough studies have been carried out demonstrating the harm done to all girls and women – including those for whom that body shape comes naturally – and the harm that is now enveloping boys and men, by the almost unremitting parade of skinniness. This public health emergency is hidden from view by media trivialisation of the problem and by attributing its causes to vanity. The insistence that the commercialisation of the body is a fit subject for political discussion and intervention is well overdue.

Skinny is only one body type. But it has been the aesthetic, with modifications in height (now tall with long legs: used to be middling with shapely ones) and breast size (now big: used to be small) for several decades. It's not that there is anything wrong with skinniness in its current manifestation: it's the singularity of the image, and the message, which makes us judge anything that deviates from it as somehow wrong.

If the aesthetic changed tomorrow and the estimated 5,000 to 10,000 images (not to mention the uncountable number on the internet) we see weekly of thin bodies were suddenly to change to – skilfully lit, photo-manipulated and artistically displayed – curvy bodies, the desire to conform to that new model could produce the same kind of anguish as today's singular skinny aesthetic does. We'd be back to Wate-On tablets at the chemist and people feeling inadequate about how thin they were.

We want to see the influence of visual culture on us as trivial, as a silliness, as something that only affects people if they have an emotional disposition (read weakness) towards it, or have a gene that disposes them to it. But it isn't trivial, it isn't about weakness and it isn't about genetics. It can be deadly. It can consume a life. It can be a hidden horror starting at six and going on until old age. And, perhaps most disturbingly, most body image problems don't show. They aren't about anorexia or obesity. They are an obsession endured.

The attempt to bring the style industries together to create a wider aesthetic, which can embrace different body types while remaining edgy and modish, is an important challenge. And it is time we took it seriously.

We need to take steps to change our visual landscape to show variety in size and shape and ethnicity and – as the Guardian has begun to do in its Weekend magazine fashion spread – age. I often feel sorry for all those talented art directors who are endlessly turning the raw photos of models into facsimile copies. It would surely be so much more stimulating for them to fashion an aesthetic which is actually modern, does no harm and restores the variety of reality back to their artifice.

Featherstone has been caricatured as clunky for her intervention, but in truth there isn't a person reading this piece who doesn't know someone who is suffering because body hatred has eaten into their sense of self. This relatively new phenomenon is fed by industries which grow fat on inducing feelings of body insecurity. Few feel good and safe in their bodies. Not even, it turns out, those who happen to meet the current beauty standards. Body hatred is a modern virus undermining so many. The fashion industries who inadvertently cause considerable pain to girls and women could reformulate their stance so that they became part of what makes living in our bodies enjoyable rather than a target for beauty terror.

Eighty-eight per cent of spending on clothes is in sizes and prices that never see the catwalk or the glossies. Wouldn't it be great to see a representative of that ordinary percentage glamorised in our magazines? Wouldn't it be great if young girls had a variety of physical shapes and activities with which to identify? Wouldn't it be great if we weren't exporting body hatred around the world by implying that the bodies on our billboards are the only ones that let you engage with the modern world? Wouldn't it be great if we taught our kids body confidence rather than body fear, so that they knew when they were hungry, knew when they were tired and enjoyed the pleasure of running around and doing sport not because it would burn off the calories but because they enjoyed being active? Wouldn't it be great if expectant mums could go to term without having photographs of celebrities, who had early caesareans to avoid the last weeks of "fat", paraded in front of them? Wouldn't it be great if new mums could get to know their babies and their own bodies' appetites rather than feel pressure to get back to their pre-pregnancy body in six weeks? Wouldn't it be great for children to absorb contented and non-anxious bodies, and go on themselves to enjoy bodies they didn't feel impelled to change and discipline for life?

The acceptance of body hatred and body difficulties is what we need to take on. The way in which the media has become a handmaiden to the diet and beauty industries, whose nefarious practices yield great profits for them and great pain for us and our daughters (and our sons), is shameful. It is easier to attack Featherstone than admit the damage that we know is around us. Because we live inside the problem and manage it individually, it doesn't mean there isn't a solution. There is. Talking to those industries who could bring about positive change is a start. It's not meddling, boring or worthy. It is interesting, challenging, and especially for those art directors, exciting.

Susie Orbach is convenor of any-body.org and author of Bodies (Profile Books)

This article appeared in The Guardian 31/7/2010 

Weight Loss Tips that Really Work, Part Three

Many of us can be quite disciplined about our eating during the day, only to completely sabotage our efforts with after-dinner snacking. Once we are ensconced on the couch, even with a good dinner in our bellies, we tend to reach for the ice cream, the chips, and the remote control. TV watching and snacking just seem to go together like macaroni and cheese.

After-dinner treat
After a day of eating your veggies, you do deserve an after-dinner treat. Otherwise, you will feel deprived and this will affect your long-term effort to lose weight. One of the best treats that you can use to reward yourself is an ounce of dark chocolate and a small glass of wine. As long as you keep your after-dinner treat to 120 calories, you won’t undo your fine efforts during the day.

Other good choices for after-dinner treats include individually-portioned snacks. For example, cookies in 100-calorie portions are a good choice. Another great choice is sugar-free fudgesicles, which are usually under 60 calories a piece. These types of treats will satisfy your sweet tooth without adding pounds.

Get Your Beauty Sleep

The final tip for weight loss may surprise you. It has nothing to do with what food choices you make or what you actually put into your mouth, yet is has everything to do with it. It involves the amount of time you sleep. Study after study has shown that people who don’t get enough sleep weigh more. Why? People that don’t get adequate sleep tend to reach for sugary, high-calorie foods to give them an energy boost and help them make it through their day. Highly caffeinated coffee drinks with sugar and whipped cream, donuts, candy bars–all of these increase energy for short amounts of time but they will also pile on unwanted pounds. You won’t need to grab that latte or do nut if you make sleep a priority. Simply realizing that thin people get adequate sleep should help you to turn off the TV an hour earlier and get at least eight hours of sleep.

Summing It All Up
As this set of three posts have demonstrated, you can lose eight pounds a month fairly easily. Start with breakfast–don’t skip it, and use it as a time to get lots of fiber, which will help you to feel more full and give you energy throughout your day. Add a serving of fruit for flavor and its handy disease-fighting anti-oxidants. Reach for healthy snacks throughout the day: nuts, fruit, and string cheese. For lunch and dinner, remember the food pyramid of vegetables on the bottom, protein on top, and carbohydrates as the smallest, triangular portion. For many of us, this is a total reversal of the way we normally eat. There is nothing wrong with carbs in small portions, but remember that they should be the smallest part of the meal because they are the highest in calories and have the least nutrition.

In addition, don’t derail your efforts to eat healthy and lose weight by denying yourself all treats. After dinner is the perfect time to indulge in a small glass of wine, some dark chocolate, or some other seemingly decadent treat. Just choose wisely; there are many individually portioned treats on the market that will keep your snack to around 100 calories.

Finally, don’t forget that getting enough sleep is an important tool in your weight-loss arsenal. People that get adequate sleep eat better during the day and have the willpower to refuse sugary snacks and high-calorie caffeinated drinks because they do not think that they need a pick-me-up at various times. By following these tips, you can lose those holiday pounds and get back to the body you love.