Shaping Up for That Big Event

When faced with the approach of a big event that you absolutely positively must look your best for but you find that the outfit you have chosen to wear is now pretty tight on you, it's time to take drastic action! Looking around for answers to the immediate problem will throw up some interesting possible solutions.

That's not such a big deal if the event is a week or even a few days away, because strict dieting might just save the day. Let's look at some of the options you might be faced with:

Drastic Dieting

Starving yourself is not really an option, even if you have been thinking about it. That's because not only could it impact your health, you probably hate to go without food for any length of time! But you can dramatically reduce your calorie intake from now up until the time you need to wear that outfit!

Get out that recipe for cabbage soup and make that your main meal from now until the important day. You can lose a few pounds in a few days on that diet, but remember its only meant as a short term fix. You'll likely put back the weight later once your return to eating your normal diet!

Get to the Gym

The gym is another option, but you have to be pretty determined to make it work for you. Recent studies have concluded that exercise is not the best way to lose weight, although it is the best way to improve fitness and health, while it can definitely tone up and firm up your body, which is the ultimate solution you want to achieve to fit into that outfit anyway.

However, not everyone is able to get to the gym and work out like a maniac for an hour or more every day. You could try aerobics classes, but again, it is very hard work and if you're not used to it you could end up doing yourself more harm than good by overextending yourself.

No one wants to turn up at a big event feeling terrible and aching all over!

Get Some Shapewear

A third alternative exists and that is to fake it! Get some good quality shapewear and prepare to be amazed that you can fit into an outfit a size (or more) smaller than you normally could do. How is this possible?

Modern shapewear gently compresses those flabby body areas that tend to bulge out of tight fitting clothing, such as the tummy, thighs, upper arms and backside. It does an excellent job of keeping everything held in while you feel comfortable wearing that amazing outfit without looking like you shoe-horned it on!

Because it is not constrictive like older girdles and corsets used to be, this body shaping underwear remains comfortable while actually promoting blood flow to the areas being held. Best of all, good quality shapewear undergarments are so sheer nowadays that it is virtually invisible beneath clothes, so no one need know that you are even wearing it!

What will you choose as your solution?

The Concept of Looking Good

Looking good is something that is imprinted on our instincts and ancestral makeup, so it is natural to want to present our best side wherever we go and whatever we do. We all love to look our best in whatever situation we find ourselves in.

The thing is, we're all different in the way we are built and while most of the time we can only make the best of what we've got, no matter how that looks. It doesn't matter whether we're slim, fit and healthy, average, overweight or obese; we still try to make the best of what we have.

Our Bodies are Ours!

In recent decades, the number of overweight and obese people as increased dramatically, with a variety of different opinions on what the exact cause may be. Whatever that reason is, the onus is still on every individual to do whatever they can to try and stay at least of a manageable weight and size for the sake of their health if for no other reason.

Unfortunately, health is often not the primary reason that people are almost obsessed with their weight. That honor goes to vanity! It is our need to look good that drives us to go on diets, exercise like crazy at the gym and do all manner of things in an attempt to keep our weight on the right side of what fashion dictates we should look like.

But in the end, our bodies belong to us and nobody else. It is our choice to do what we do with them that either causes them to stay slim and healthy or get fat and flabby.

The Industrial Intervention

There are whole industries built around our need to look good, with the fashion industry in the forefront of creating a certain look that millions of people aspire to whether their doctors agree or not. The clothes that are produced are aimed at the slimmer figure for the simple reason that the models that display them at fashion shows are pencil thin and that's the way designers want them to be.

Tagging along for the ride is the enormous weight loss industry, born of our incessant need to follow the fashions of the day. There is no mistake it exists because of and is linked to the clothing and fashion industry.

On the one hand, there is a common sense medically sound good reason for staying at our correct weight (as opposed to trying to be thinner than we ought to be). While on the other there is the appearance factor that forces us to start diet after diet in the pursuit of a smaller figure.

Will the Merry-Go-Round Ever End?

The question has to be "will this crazy merry-go-round of weight gain, dieting, satisfaction and then more weight gain ever end?" the short answer is "No," as long as we continue to eat whatever we want and don't get enough exercise to burn off the excess calories we are consuming.

Which leaves us in a real dilemma. Great looking and tasting food is all around us, 24/7 and the temptation is just too great for most people to avoid it.

Sure, some of us can happily buy only fresh ingredients from the supermarkets and cook our own healthy meals. But we are in the minority. It is just too easy to buy a packet of this or that easy cook, "ready to eat in 2 minutes" processed meal or processed ingredients that save time and effort in the kitchen.

Until attitudes toward processed and junk food change, people will keep getting fat. Fact! The food industry will not willingly change the ingredients in its products because that would affect their bottom line and they have to keep their shareholders happy, right?

What is Left For Us?

That leaves us in a predicament. We want to look good and wear great, fashionable clothes. But we're eating too many calories, getting too fat and are not able to fit into them!

There is the short cut of wearing body contouring shapewear undergarments, which works well for those that are still not so overweight they would be trying to cheat the laws of physics. But for the obese and morbidly obese, even this option is realistically out of reach.

That means it’s a case of diet with a vengeance or put up with wearing super plus size clothes that will only go so far to hide the embarrassing bulges no matter how well you try and conceal it. Many will diet and fail. A few will succeed and keep the weight off.

The problem still won't go away for the vast majority, which is so sad.