What You Need To Know Before You Even Consider Trying Out Waist Training

I get it, ladies. I hate sit-ups. I hate most types of working out. We can all be honest here: It sucks.

Don't believe your friends who say they love jogging. If anyone you know has ever Instagrammed a stupid quote like, "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels," you probably should unfollow them because they have never eaten a chalupa.

But no matter how much you hate your stomach area (trust me, I hate mine), please do not waist train without doing some research.

I know what you are thinking: Tons of celebs do it. Tons of celebs also get plastic surgery. And doing that might actually be a better idea than waist training.

Why? Because waist training is just like wearing a corset. Yes, I'm talking about that thing women wore in the 1500s.

Yes, our ancestors wore this thing before we had women's rights or — let's be honest — even proper sanitation or understanding of medical science. We still gave children cocaine as medicine and thought draining people's blood would get rid of toxins. Yes, this was the level of medical knowledge that thought squeezing your organs with a corset was OK.

Corsets pretty much work by physical binding. Think about a boa constrictor wrapping around your insides. Yeah, you will look thinner, but wearing one too tight or too often might affect your health.

Corsets restrict breathing, which makes the possibility of fainting much higher. But much more dangerously, constricting your stomach, whether through a corset or a "trainer," can damage your internal organs. This practice greatly affected women's health, and doctors caught on to this.

By 1890, doctors were telling women to stop using corsets. They were really trying to let women know they were damaging their bodies. It wasn't always easy, given that it had been a beauty standard for hundreds of years, but they did it. Styles changed.

We'd made it 100 years without them, except for the occasional wedding, sex party or Halloween costume. But then, we took out a tiny bit of the metal and named the corset something else. Now, we're marketing it as a fitness trend.

Think about it this way: Are you willing to possibly fracture your ribs to look slightly thinner?

If you said yes, then that's your choice. I'm not going to tell you what to do with your body. I don't understand your choice, but I am going to respect it. If you said no, then don't believe the idea waist training is 100 percent healthy or 100 percent safe.

We all do things to look hot, and a lot of them might be less than healthy. We all put chemicals on our faces and wreck our arches in heels, but that doesn't mean we should. While we might hurt our skin and feet, your lungs and ribs are arguably more important.

While there is an argument over whether waist training works or not, we shouldn't be going backwards. Because corsets only worked as long as you kept them on for years. We know this.

We know this because it also caused skeletal damage. There is a ton of evidence that if you wear one too tightly and often enough, you might get that perfect hour glass figure. We have 500 years of disfiguring evidence to prove this.

We already got rid of corsets. We should try to love our stomachs, our silhouettes and our bodies, hourglass figure or not. And if you are going to try this trend, be careful. Don't go too tight. Don't hurt yourself, and get the facts.