Our current culture is obsessed with thinness and height to such a point that from corporate to the dating world, appearance has become concurrent to success.
There are even studies that suggest people are more likely to be successful in life just because of their height. However, if you are blessed with an average height, these studies may not paint a pretty picture.
The good news is there is still something you can do. If you want, you can make yourself look taller and leaner than you are by making fashion work for you rather than against you.
You are not going to go from 5’6 to 6’2, but you will definitely look taller. In this article, I will cover five ways you can use to look taller and slimmer:
1. Wear Boots, Heels, Anything That Adds an Inch to Your Height
This is one of the easiest ways to add inches to your height. Just wear boots or heels, whatever suits your taste. However, make sure you are comfortable with your footwear.
The last thing you want to do is put on a heel so high and uncomfortable that it makes it difficult for you to walk straight. You don’t have to wear stilettos or heels specifically. Any footwear that adds an inch is more than enough.
Moreover, choosing a pointy toe over a round toe, nude shoes, and low vamps will also give you a taller, slimmer look.
2. Wear Clothes That Fit Well
The most important aspect of style is fitting.
If your clothes are loose, you will look heavier and shorter than you are, and if they are too tight, you will feel uncomfortable wearing them. However, if your clothes fit you perfectly, not only you will feel great wearing them, but you will also look your best self.
This includes the right size pants, shoes, shirts, accessories, or anything you wear. In brief, wearing clothes that fit you well will make you look taller, slimmer.
Moreover, It doesn’t matter how expensive your clothes are, if they don’t fit you properly, they will only affect your appearance negatively.
I once bought a jacket, a few sizes bigger. I spent too much money buying it, but I was happy since it looked badass in the photo. However, No matter how many times I wore it, I never felt comfortable. I bought it only to realize that it looked great, just not on me.
If you are trying to improve your appearance, wearing clothes that fit you perfectly is your best bet, and It doesn’t matter what looks good on someone else.
If it doesn’t fit you, there is a high probability that it will not look good on you.
To make sure that the clothes you are wearing fit you perfectly, you can do one of the two things, Either buy clothes that fit you or get them tailored to your size.
3. Lose Excess Weight
You can wear certain types of clothes to look slim, for instance, traditional Indian dresses. However, another way to look slimmer is by actually losing excess weight.
I know it’s easier said than done, but if you want to look slimmer, you should try losing weight. It’s not as complicated as it seems. You just need to do two things consistently for a few months:
1. Make Dietary Changes
When it comes to dietary changes, all you need to do is adopt a diet and stick to it. It can be any diet. Even a calorie deficit of 500 calories/day counts.
On average, a woman needs to reduce her calorie intake to 1,500 calories per day to lose a pound a week. Here’s a calorie calculator you can use to determine how many calories you need to consume daily to lose weight.
After finding out how many calories you need to consume daily, You can use the Cronometer app to track your calories intake, micronutrients, exercises, biometrics, etc.
This way, you can ensure that you are not just consuming empty calories but also consuming nutrient-rich foods required for the proper functioning of the body.
If you want to lose weight swiftly, I would recommend trying the keto diet. The Keto diet focuses on foods that contain a lot of fats, an adequate amount of protein, and very few carbohydrates.
People have lost more than 100 lbs in a year with the help of the keto diet. I followed keto in 2020 and managed to lose 24.5 lbs in 47 days.
Here’s an article on How to Start the Keto Diet and a Keto Diet Food List you can use to follow the keto diet. You can get a tailored keto diet meal plan concurrent with your weight loss goals from here.
2. Adopt an Exercise Routine
Another thing you need to do consistently to lose weight is exercise.
Exercise has a bad reputation when it comes to weight loss. There are studies that suggest exercise plays a little role in weight loss. As a result, most people tend to avoid it altogether.
Yes, you can lose weight just by making changes in your diet. However, if you want to lose weight and stay that way, then you have to add an exercise routine to your lifestyle.
Moreover, You don’t have to exercise for hours to lose weight; A simple 10-20 minute workout is enough. You can also stick to the workout routine mentioned below to lose weight:
- Jogging: 30-60 minutes (Optional)
- Skipping: 5 sets of 1 minute
- Squats: 5 sets of 30 seconds
- Push-ups/Overhead press: 5 sets of 30 second
- Pull-ups/Bicep curls: 5 sets of 30 second
- Abs crunches: 5 sets of 30 second
To perform this workout routine, you need a pair of dumbells, a pull-up rod, etc. However, you can also use two water bottles of the same size and fill them with sand.
4. Improve Your Posture
Office work affects posture, It’s what it is, and if you don’t take proper action to keep your posture in check, it will get affected due to hours of you sitting in front of a computer.
Moreover, most people due to their stressful lifestyle pay little attention to their health, let alone their posture, Making it worse as they age.
If you have a desk job, taking action to improve your posture can help you in looking taller. In a way, by correcting your posture, you can increase your height. However, it will take some time and effort before you start seeing results.
The best way to correct your posture is by doing yoga poses and sitting properly. To keep my posture in check, I also practice yoga poses twice a week, Thursday and Sunday.
You may find this video on yoga poses for excellent posture by SarahBethYoga useful:
6. Stand With Confidence
If you are short or have an average height, by using clothes and maintaining your fitness, you can look your best self. But if you are surrounded by really tall people, it won’t make much of a difference.
Since I am short myself (5’8), I have consumed an unhealthy amount of information related to looking taller, better. And most of the information didn’t help me much in dealing with situations where I am surrounded by people who are taller than me.
But there is one thing that helped me in dealing with those situations and more. That one thing is confidence. If you work on yourself to a point where you are confident with being yourself, I don’t think you will even need clothing hacks to look taller.
Here are a few books that may help you in building confidence: The Confidence Gap by Russ Harris, The 50th Law by 50 cent and Robert Greene, The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene.
Check out this clip by goldeneralegends:
This clip of Arnold Schwarzenegger explaining how to pose may help you in understanding the importance of posing/standing confidently.
In this clip, he is advising his friend about posing. Arnold explains how a lot of short guys hide away when they pose while guys who are tall flex more comfortably.
As a result, even if the short guy has better-developed muscles, it still won’t matter cause he will not even pose properly.
This is something that happens beyond posing. People who are short normally slouch and are uncomfortable around people who are tall. This makes them look even shorter than they are.
Take pride in who you are. Take pride in your height, no matter how short you are. And always keep in mind, there are millions of great men and women in history with short heights.
If they can do it, so can we.
(Marie Curie: 5ft, Alexander the Great: 5’3 – 5’5 ft, Scarlett Johansson: 5’3 ft, Robert Downey: 5’8½” ft … none of them needs an introduction)
Conclusion
By making these changes, the least you can do is avoid mistakes that are making you look shorter and heavier than you really are. However, some of these changes might take some time and effort before showing results.
Moreover, Keep in mind that there is nothing wrong with being short, no one really chooses their height, no one really earns their height, it’s all up to genetics and luck.
P.S Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this article on Ways to Look Taller and Slimmer, feel free to share it. Moreover, leave a question down below in the comment section if you have any
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Rudra
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