How To Shrink Your Waist Without Dieting
Let’s start this article with a few hard hitting truths to get us going:
This article isn’t about fat loss, it’s about changing your shape. But everything you will read about getting a smaller waist will probably be talking about fat loss and pointing you towards some crappy product.
There are a few things that can 100% fuck off straight to the bin:
Fat burners and all other ‘fat loss’ pills and supplements.
Waist trainers (they are dangerous).
Skinny teas and coffees, unless you like diarrhoea?
Fat loss Injections, patches, creams and treatments.
Fad diets, Starvation diets or anything you see a celebrity doing.
Dieting groups like Slimming World etc.
Ok, now I’ve got that off my chest lets dive in to how you can shrink your waistline without having to diet.
Whats the secret?
The way you can shrink your waist without dieting is to not focus on weight loss but strategic muscle gain.
It’s all about the visual perception of a small waist, not actually a smaller waist (at least not in the beginning).
In order to make your waist look smaller you need to widen everything else around it, that means:
Bigger, rounder glutes.
Better developed quads (thighs).
Broader, wider lats (back muscles).
Broader, wider shoulders (mid delts).
Broader, thicker upper back.
Quintessentially this is how we develop an hour glass figure.
Grow Your Glutes
One way to visually shrink your waist is to grow your glutes.
If you want to grow you need to be eating enough food and protein, unlike fat loss you’re going to have to up your caloric intake.
Calorie Surplus + Weight Training = Muscle Growth….. Simple.
Now, I know this scares the shit out of a lot of women, but it’s necessary, and when done properly won’t lead to excessive fat gain.
Just as long as the food choices are smart and you’re not smashing Five Guys every day.
There is a lot of content out there on building your glutes while shrinking your waist and to be honest this is really hard to do at the same time as one requires a calorie surplus while the other requires a calorie deficit. I recommend growing first before losing fat.
Again we need calories and protein to build those glute muscles, so eat.
On training days you need to be eating to fuel your muscles. We are damaging them and breaking down the muscle, we need energy to repair them so you can’t limit your calories and expect to build muscle.
I’ve got a brilliant and handy CALORIE CALCULATOR on my website that will give you custom calorie targets, advice on macro splits and advice on either building muscle or burning fat, make sure you check it out.
I have tons of articles on glute growth so I won’t go into lots of detail here, but I suggest you read these articles next:
As a quick reference, I recommend adding lots of Hip Thrusts and Glute Bridges to your training.
How To Grow Your Quads
For a lot of women the though of making your thighs bigger flies in the face of every beauty standard you’ve ever been told, I mean no one ever called a guy ‘Thunder Thighs’…..
But let me tell you, nothing compares to a great set of pins! And adding a little bit of shape to your quads goes a long way to building your ideal physique and curves in the right places.
Some of the best quad developers are the Squat, Leg Press, Hack Squat and Split Squats.
Squats
A fantastic leg developer and good for the glutes too, any form of squats will work - Goblet, Front, Split, Sumo, whatever you prefer, just squat!
Leg Press
Leg pressing is great for quad development. Keep your feet low and get as deep as possible and I mean deep, your calves should touch your hamstrings ideally.
Hack Squats
Like the leg press, you should be aiming for maximum depth to get maximum quad stimulus, they are not easy, you should be slightly hating life by the end of these 😂.
OK, so that covers a lot of the lower body work.
We’ve built your quads and developed your glutes and hamstrings. Let’s move up and look at back and shoulders.
To make your waist look smaller we need to make your lats wider and your shoulders broader.
How To Build Your Lats
The lats (Latissimus Dorsi) are the biggest muscle in your back and building them will develop more of what we call a V Taper where they broaden as they move up your back, and guess what!? That will make your waist look smaller.
The lats are build through a combination of VERTICAL and HORIZONTAL pulling movements such as Lat Pulldowns, Pull ups, Lat Focused Rows, Dumbbell Rows and Straight Arm Pulldowns.
Lat Pulldowns
There are several variations of lat pulldowns but the best versions for lats are ones where you can minimise upper back recruitment and where your arms are pulling from in front of you. My personal favourite is the incline lat pulldown.
Lat Focused Rows
All rows will have some level of lat activation but the lat focused row is more specific for targeting the lats. The aim is to fully contract the lats but the arm is not moving back behind your body.
Straight Arm Pulldowns
These are about as close as you’ll get to an isolation exercise for the lats, focus on getting a good long stretch at the top and a deep squeeze at the bottom, keep arm involvement to an absolute minimum.
How To Broaden Your Shoulders
Again, broad shoulders is probably a term that strikes fear into the hearts of women everywhere! We’re not talking about build delts that look like bowling balls, but even a subtle curve to the shoulders will enhance the V taper and make your waist look comparatively smaller.
When we talk about widening the appearance of your shoulders we are talking specifically about developing the Medial/Lateral Head of the delts, basically the side of your shoulder/arm.
The most common way to develop this little but important muscle group is the good old Lateral Raise.
There are lots of ways to perform lateral raises:
Dumbbell and Band Lat Raises
Cable Lat Raises
Single Arm Raises (Dumbbell, Cable, Landmine, Incline)
Crucifix Raises
W Raises and Y Raises etc
Another option is the Upright Row, Now this is sometimes controversial. Some people will tell you to never do them because they can cause shoulder impingement, others will say they are totally fine and safe.
My advice is this: If your shoulders feel sore, weird or uncomfortable doing them then stop doing them, otherwise it should be fine to continue with them, just keep it light.
Upright Rows
Mix it up, try different varieties of lateral raises and rows/pulls. A good variety of exercises, angles, weights and stimuli will help to develop a nice broad back and make your waist look smaller.
So there you have a selection of excellent exercises that along with the right nutrition will develop a strong body specifically designed to grow your glutes, quads, back and shoulders and make your waist appear smaller.
Then once you have built your physique you can see if you need to lose any body fat and tighten things up a bit.
Of course this by no means an exhaustive list of exercises, but we don’t have the luxury of going into that much detail here.
Check out this detailed post on How To Calculate Your Macros For Fat Loss when you are ready to drop some body fat or you can
Check out my calorie calculator to see how much food you need to grow your glutes.
Confused?
Then let me take care of all of it for you by becoming a coaching client:
If you are looking to make that change, work with a strength and conditioning coach who understands exactly how to get you the smaller waist you want then
apply for online coaching by hitting the button below.
And Check out of a few of my clients below who’ve added up to 4 inches to their glutes while keeping their waists small.
I’m Aaron Schiavone, owner of Mind Muscle Personal Training. Over the past 7+ years I have helped women increase their self confidence, improve their relationship with food, improve their health, become stronger, fitter and happier..