Last updated on February 13th, 2017 at 02:29 pm
Does Waist Training / Corset Training
Produce Lasting Results?
Thousands of you have searched for waist training before and after pictures, and I’ve promised to deliver: welcome to a compilation of corset training results from some of my friends and acquaintances in the corseting community. Below you will see some pictures, videos and stories of how corsets have played an integral role in helping people to reshape their bodies. Some have experienced weight loss along with their waist training, and others have not. A few have even gained weight, but still lost inches in their waist! As you read these, please note that not all of these results are typical – some have trained faster or farther than I would have personally condoned, and extreme results are often the result of extreme practices. Remember to speak with a trusted health professional before you implement corset training, and have your health monitored throughout the process.
*The photos and stories featured here were freely shared by the corseters, and Lucy has personally ensured that they are all legal adults who made the educated choice to pursue corsetry.*
Penny Brown
Model Penny Brown’s results are rather extreme, because she achieved dramatic results in only three months. Prior to deciding to corset train, Penny had a brief period of rapid weight gain due to stress. In her before picture (the night she decided to start corset training), she had a natural waist of 38 inches. With a combination of exercise and waist training 23 hours a day, she lost all her stress weight and brought her natural waist down to 26 inches – a reduction of 12 inches in her natural waist. Penny mentions that the corset in her before / after photos are the same one, named “Wesley” which she altered as needed from a size 36″ down to size 24″ – over the course of three months. Penny stressed the importance of core strength exercises when training 23/7, and said she could perform up to 200 sit-ups in a single set. When Wesley finally broke and Penny went without any maintenance corseting, it took nearly 6 months to lose the results. (Lucy’s note: This is super hardcore, and not for everyone – I generally recommend a corseted reduction of about 1 inch per month, or what feels most comfortable for you.) Follow Penny’s blog on Tumblr here.
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Shanell (Souljagurlsha)
Shanell started training in 2013 as an accessory to her already healthy lifestyle of eating clean and exercising 5-6 days a week. In this video, she shows how she started with a natural waist of 31.5 inches, and after a period of 14 weeks wearing her corsets up to 20 hours a day, she now has a waist of 24.5 inches – a reduction of 7 inches in her natural waist. Shanell started with a size 26″ corset and now wears her size 22″ corsets closed. She has maintained her results for nearly a year by corseting regularly but for shorter time periods, around 10 hours a day, 4-5 days a week. Follow Souljagurlsha’s great channel on Youtube.
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Heidi of Strait-Laced Dame
The face behind corset blog Strait-Laced Dame, Heidi laced up for the first time in October of 2011, at the age of 21, and never looked back. With mediocre self-image and health, and without a genuine subject of passion, beginning waist training constituted a critical turning point in her adult life. Starting with a natural waist circumference of 27” and weight of 120 lbs, Heidi realized a two inch reduction to that uncorseted measurement within 6 months of consistent waist training. She has since maintained that natural waist measurement, even while increasing in strength and weight (to 130 lbs), and she now wears 19” corsets. In addition, Heidi has recently began drafting and producing custom corsets for herself and others. Learn more about Heidi on her website, Strait-Laced Dame.
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Miranda Rights
Miranda Rights is an active waist trainer and tightlacer. She began wearing corsets in late 2012 and waist training in early 2013, starting with a 32″ waist at the time. For the first year, she wore a corset sparingly. After a year of occasional corseting, she had seen only a small reduction in her waist and maintained between 29-31″, despite significant weight loss. Starting in early 2014, Miranda began to gradually increase her dedication to waist training. She was maintaining a natural waist of around 25″ by January 2015.
Now, in March 2016, she maintains a natural waist of 23″ and laces down to 19″.
Born with a straight figure, Miranda credits her complete body change to waist training, combined with lower-body weight lifting to build muscle, cardio and a plant-based diet. She says waist training has taught her patience and control, improved her self esteem and her posture, and helped her overcome many years of body dysmorphia and unhealthy habits. Miranda has lost over 30 lbs since the start of her waist training journey, but she has never intended to use corsets as a weight loss tool. She currently follows a steady exercise regimen of weight lifting, hot yoga, high intensity cardio and stretching to maintain total body fitness. She wears her corsets anywhere from 4-12 hours per day 5-6 days per week, and sleeps in a corset a few nights per month.
You can follow Miranda on Instagram @loudnight and on YouTube.
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Diantha Dove
Diantha grew up with a penchant for fantasy characters and the wasp-waist aesthetic, but it was not until the birth of her son in 2012 that she decided to begin training. Diantha says, “I was in a deep depression because I have never been this big before (with a waist at 42 inches)… So I did some research and I came across body modification and tightlacing. It was eye opening to see a whole community of people that had the same mind process as me. I felt so excited and happy to know that I was not alone. I bought my first corset (which was not a good one) and have been in love ever since.” The corset acted as a catalyst for change, and with a combination of daily corseting and a vegan lifestyle, Diantha lost more than 150 pounds and 13+ inches in her natural waist over the course of few years. She now regularly wears a size 20″ corset, with a natural waist of 27″. She has no plans of stopping her journey for her end goal is to get as small as her body will allow. Follow Diantha on Tumblr here.
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Samantha Lubrano
Samantha started waist training in 2011, starting with a 26″ natural waist and starting with a 24″ corset for gentle reduction. She had been vegetarian since the age of 16, but transitioned to vegan / gluten free at age 20 – and over the last three years, she has slowly trained down to a size 18″ corset, lost 30 lbs, and reduced her natural waist by 5 inches, to just just 21″ today. She credits the practice of training to teaching her responsibility and respect for her own body. “It has in every way changed my life,” she said. “After not loving myself for so long and trying to take my own life I have found something that has made me feel whole again and to truly love myself.”
“My second custom from Sin and Satin, shown right, is my favorite corset I have ever owned. She named it the ” Light with Might.” I wanted a corset that just looked like I was wearing a cage around me. So she helped me pick out this beautiful nude mesh fabric and we decided the boning would be black with ribbon laces in 18 inches with a KILLER hipspring. She’s my summer corset and my pride and joy. Going custom has changed everything. They have formed to me because they are basically another part of me. My body is what I have always wanted. They pull my waist in where I want it to be and my ribs are untouched. I can wear them longer and I can move more freely. When I take my customs off it looks like I have taken my torso off they are molds of me. There is no better feeling then looking down at a custom corset that was made just for you and for nobody else. You know like Cinderellas glass slipper. I love Jasmine and her work. I cannot thank her enough. I am in love with my pieces from her. I feel like a princess in my corsets from Sin and Satin and I cannot wait to work with her again on another master piece.”
Samantha wears her corset in the day (especially at work where she does regular heavy lifting) but says that she doesn’t sleep in her corset. Waist training hasn’t stopped her from eating 3 home-cooked meals everyday – plus fruit and nuts for snacks in between. For fitness, she does sit-ups, crunches and squats, and she commutes by walking everywhere. Follow Samantha on her Instagram here.
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May Mo
May started wearing corsets in 2013, and over the course of a year also started to transition to veganism. Interestingly, May says that for the first 6 months, she had gained weight from 58kg to 62.5kg (130 lbs to 138 lbs) yet her natural waist dropped from 26.5 inches naturally down to 24 inches naturally. She currently trains about 20 hours a day, wearing a size 20″ corset. You can read more about her waist training journey on her blog here.
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Juno
Juno started waist training in January of 2014 at the age of 45, and had a natural waist of 33 inches. She went exclusively through Romantasy for her corsets and training advice, wearing training corsets made by Jill Hoverman and utilizing Ann Grogan’s Roller Coaster method of waist training (which typically means a maximum corseted duration of 8-12 hours per day/ 6 days a week, but sometimes as little as 2 hours a day). By November 2014, Juno was able to cinch down to 25″ internally in a corset, and her natural waist reduced to 29 inches (a reduction of 4″ in her natural waist). A year into her training now, Juno mentions that her goal is to reach and then maintain a corseted waist of 23 inches (this would make her waist measurement nearly half that of her hips!). Read a bit more about Juno’s (and others’) progress on Romantasy’s waist training site here.
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Milla Iloniemi
Milla is a tightlacer from Finland with an incredible 10 years of training under her belt. She started training when she was only 14-15 years old, and she mentioned that she had a waist of 90cm (35.4″) when she started [no “before” pictures provided]. By wearing her corset daily (and sometimes to bed), over the past decade she saw a 12-inch reduction in her natural waist, to about 60cm (23.5″) at her smallest so far. She now wears her corsets at 46-47cm (about 18 or 18.5″ under the corset), making her current corseted waist almost half of her original natural waist!
Milla is also a talented corsetiere; every corset she used to train down was handmade on her own. She mentions that she may stop training at 45 cm (17.7″) and is currently still reducing her waist at a slow and steady rate of 1cm (about half an inch) per year — she takes precautions due to her asthma, but says that her condition hasn’t stopped her from waist training. Milla has kept her meals regular, and particularly enjoys snacking on candy and salmiakki (salty liquorice).
(Asthmatics, please consult your doctor before beginning a waist training journey*)
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Monique
Before Monique started corset training, she was already slender with a natural waist of 25-26 inches depending on the day. Over the course of only four months, she managed to cinch down 5 inches in her corset. “I’ve taken it slow no bruising or pain what’s so ever,” Monique says. “Everyone’s bodies are different, I truthfully thought it would take much longer to close my 20inch and see any results.” Her natural waist reduced an average of 3 inches in this time, to 22.5 inches when not wearing her corset. Monique documents her waist training on her instagram here.
| Before and After, with corset | Before and After, without corset |
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KathTea Katastrophy:
Model and Corsetiere KathTea started waist training in September 2011, with a natural waist of 29″. These pictures show her progress over the course of a little over a year, reducing her natural waist by 3 inches. KathTea also worked for awhile as a personal trainer, and was able to demonstrate exercises like planks, squats and crunches to her clients, still wearing her tightlacing corsets under her uniform. Since exercise in a conventional corset can lead to corset damage, KathTea is looking to develop a true training corset that is also workout-friendly. KathTea mentions that her meals remained the same during this time. Read more on her blog, Tightly Laced Love.
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Michele Kobke
Michele trained intensely for a period of about 4 years when she decided to challenge Cathie Jung’s Guinness World Record for the smallest waist on a living person. During these 4 years, her waist shrank from about 25″ down to 55cm (or 21.6″), and she regularly closed size 16″ corsets – and Michele mentioned that she did not lose even 1 kg of weight during this time. However in early 2014, Michele decided to cease training, andin this video you can see that after a year of no maintenance, her natural waist has just about resumed its original size of 63cm (about 24.8″).
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Fakir Musafar
Fakir Musafar is referred to by many as the father of the Modern Primitive movement, the practice of ritualistic body modification for personal growth or spiritual experience. Inspired by the Ibitoe in New Guinea, he became interested in belting, and later corseting. By 1959, Fakir was able to close a 19 inch corset. His natural waist started at 32 inches, and by the end of his training, his natural waist measured 25 inches. (Lucy’s note: in the bottom right photo, there may also be some practice of advanced stomach vacuum.) You can read more about Fakir on his website here.
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Ethel Granger
This is the most extreme case of before and after, possibly in history, and should not be taken as the norm, nor should it even be considered possible for most people, especially today.
Before her marriage to William Arnold Granger, Ethel was said to be a “plain, unsophisticated twenty-three year old girl who wore… shapeless 1920s dresses” and sported a natural waist of about 24 inches. William despised the 1920s fashion and insisted that Ethel wear corsets to accentuate her hourglass figure – first starting with a size 24″ corset that matched her natural waist, so she could become accustomed to the feel of the rigidity of the corset, and then gradually sizing down. By 1959 (after more than 30 years) Ethel was wearing corsets nearly 24/7 and had reduced her waist over 10 inches, for an internal corseted waist of only 13″ — putting her in the Guinness book of records for the smallest waist on any woman.
Unfortunately it is not known what her natural waist looked like before she started wearing corsets, as I hadn’t found any pictures before her marriage to William – but you can see what her natural waist looks like in the rare photo below – clearly modified by the corset. It’s important to observe that even after decades of training, Ethel is still able to stand up unassisted by a corset, if only for brief periods.
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Do you have corset training results that you would like to share? Send me an email with before / after photos and your story, and you could see your results published here!
I’m almost done with seasoning, but once I’m done with that I don’t know how I will fit corsetting into my full schedule and also include exercise to keep my muscles strong. How can I organize my time so I can still see faster results?
Hi Rachel, I have an article on different corset training techniques – you are welcome to try either of these techniques or a blend of the two, until you find one that works with your schedule best. I would also recommend working out hard without a corset, then take a quick shower, put on your corset within 30-60 minutes of your exercise, and grab your protein – many people get faster results by this technique! Here’s more info on how corsets affect the muscles and how to take advantage of this.
Hi Lucy, I found your site a while back thru Sarah A Chrisman’s book Victorian Secrets. I will be submitting my measurements for your suggestions for a corset, I have been wearing one bought thru Amazon but am ready to work more diligently on waist training and weight loss. I know a custom will be down the road but right now I hope to start with less pricier options. I am overweight with the frustrating belly hang! I would gladly do photos. I love your site and it has provided me with much information, looking forward to working with you!
Thank you so much, Annette!
I would love to see more of these types of photos. Very inspiring. This helps me feel like my goals are attainable. I hope others share their real life photos! I have tighlaced for years, and had at one point had my waist down to 18″ at it’s smallest.I recently had my first baby, so have taken a year off. I am starting back up again and would love to get my old shape back again :)
Hi Sam, congratulations on your baby! This gallery is overdue for an update so I’ll look into recruiting some more examples in the near future. :)
Hello Lucy! I’ve been following you for a few years and I’ve been interested in Corsetry for a few years as well. I want to start waist training but I just want to know if waist training should only be done with custom corsets or if it’s ok to do it with the standard timeless trends corsets also. I have a wide rib cage in proportion to my hips and I feel that the Libra corset would be a perfect fit for me. I have worn corsets inconsistently for about 7-8 years now. With a rib cage of about 34-35”, 33-34” waist, and 34” hips I comfortably wear a 26” cincher from Fairy goth mother for an entire day. I also recently got a size 26” standard hourglass corset from timeless trends and it is very comfortable, but I have a V shape in the back because of my rib cage. I’m thinking of getting the size 24 Libra as my rib cage is the only thing that keeps me from lacing smaller and a custom corset is a bit out of my price range. Do you think the Libra 24” would be a good start to my waist training?
Thank you!
Hi Crystal, thanks for your comment! From your measurements, I can see how the TT brand hourglass corset would fit too tight in the ribcage and too loose in the hips, resulting in a V shaped lacing gap. If you had ordered this from my shop, please feel free to email me and we can set up an exchange / return for you! The 24″ Libra corset will definitely be a better fit for you, especially if you are able to lace closed a size 26″ corset from FGM. You can find the Libra corsets on this page.
I was also wondering about results based on how long/ when you wear your corset. I’m aware it’s a vastly different experience for everyone, but in general, would you experience better results sleeping in your corset every night, or walking around with it every day? And is moving around a lot (not necessarily exercising) is your corset better or worse for the corset, for your health, and for your waist goals? Sorry for the questions, I just have so many
Hi Jaelyn, there are several waist training methods, but the general consensus is: the longer you wear your corset, the more you’re likely to see results. It’s more effective to wear a corset at a light reduction for long hours, as opposed to a tight reduction for just a few hours. I have more information about that in this article.
Those who waist train are usually able to go about their normal life while wearing corsets: bending over and picking things up, riding a bike to and from work, gardening, etc. It’s just a different way of moving – bending at the hip usually, and not at the waistline (which is a more healthy and ergonomic way to move anyway). You don’t have to just “sit pretty” the entire time you’re wearing your corset. :) But the durability of your corset depends heavily on the quality/ brand of the corset, more so than how much the wearer may fidget.
Hi. I was just curious, what would their natural waist be if they stopped corsetting? Especially in extreme cases like with Ethel
Hi Jaelyn, if you stop wearing your corset forever, you’re likely to lose most or all of your results. The body responds best to consistency, but if you stop, it will always revert – same as if you stop lifting weights you’ll lose strength, if you stop stretching you’ll lose flexibility, if you stop running you’ll lose your cardio endurance, etc. I have a video about the (semi) permanency of corseting over here on my Youtube channel.
All women’s in this world facing different kinds of problems. I was also facing some problems, the major problem is my waist. Day by day I was lost my hourglass figure, early of the year my waist was 26 inches but day by day my waist was changed. Those days my waist size is 29 inches. Then I start using corsets and back my main waist size and now my waist size 25 inches. It takes just 6 months. It’s very comfortable to wear. I also use this in my workouts.
I resently looked at the real life barbie YouTube video and it got me wondering, “did she have rib removal surgery, like everyone says or did she use a corset?”
If so her results are Awsome! The more I thought about it, I thought “hey why not ask an expert!’
So hey… In your experience is this possible to do with a corset and if so what corset could get results like that. I’ll put a Google image link below for reference.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=barbie+real+life&client=ms-android-htc&hl=en&source=android-browser-goto&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiJo6aC9fjKAhUCKZQKHRXeBW0Q7AkIIw
Hi Chloe, her features are heavily Photoshopped. If you look at TV interviews with her like this one, you’ll see not only the true shape of her waist and figure, but also her nose and jawline are not nearly as tiny as they appear in photos. I don’t think she has had ribs removed (although model Pixie has been in the news for her resection) but I don’t believe all her pictures to be true.
Hello. Let’s say I corset trained to my goal waist. If I took off the corset for good, however I maintain a consistent health and diet. Would it revert back to my natural waist or continue to stay at my goal waist? I know you explained maintenance but does that mean I will always have to rely on my corset? Also, if I wear a corset long enough that it moves my floating ribs, will my floating ribs keep my new shape if I maintain the same weight or will that also possibly move back to wear my floating ribs used to be? Sorry for all these questions lol. I’m 20, 5’3, and have a small body frame
Hi Sandy, it doesn’t mean that you will become physically dependent on your corset. As long as you work out your core muscles, you’ll be able to stand up on your own just fine. But if you want to keep your results, some maintenance wearing is necessary. If you train your ribcage to be smaller, it will give longer lasting results since bones take a long time to move (both a long time to get those results and also a long time for them to shift back out) however if you take up a sport like swimming, or if you sing professionally or play a brass instrument which increases your lung capacity and expands your ribcage – or even if you get pregnant, your ribs will expand again so even that is not a 100% permanent change. That is to say, if you train your ribs by 25 years old, they’re not guaranteed to stay the exact same way when you’re 70. Dramatic body changes are possible, but I’m not out to give anyone unrealistic expectations.
Do you have any advice about using corsets to flatten your stomach, like which type of corset works best etc.? I’ve been looking online for info about it but if there is any information on it, it’s flooded out by info on waist-cinching!
I want to know this too. All these examples are pretty much flat belly people. I have a corset that goes all the way down to the pubic bone and flattens my stomach. But, I cannot sit in it without the underbust pushing my breasts way up or it flares out. Plus, it is noticeable with my clothes on. I would love to know where/how to start with a comfortable corset for flattening bellies too.
Hi Kimberly, there are a few people here who started with bigger tummies, like Penny Brown, Juno, and Diantha Dove. If you also follow Souljagurlsha (Shanell) on Youtube, she had a baby I think in 2015, and she vlogged through her entire pregnancy and post partum, and her return to corseting. She has a little bit of loose skin below her belly button from her pregnancy but otherwise her abdomen is very flat once again.
If your corset is pushing up on your breasts when you sit down, it’s possible you’ll need a corset that is shorter from the waist up, but still long enough from the waist down to cover your lower abdomen the way you want. I believe Mystic City makes corsets that are short from the waist up, message them and ask for Bekki for her recommendations based on your measurements. :)