the scoop on skinny wraps

i am sure your facebook newsfeed has been really cluttered with a ton of itworks propaganda lately and you may or may not be kind of over it. if you're like me, you know that losing weight doesn't happen by magic, it comes from hard work. but then there's all those pictures of miraculous inches lost with these "skinny wraps"? how exactly do they work? are the people in the photos just sucking it in in the "after" photos? what are these skinny wraps??

i was sent a wrap from itworks free of charge to try it out. so let me make this clear: i do NOT work for itworks, i have not been compensated in any way for this writeup, and i do not plan on signing up to work for them in the future. this review is about as unbiased as they come, people.

i imagined the wrap to be more wrap-like, if that makes sense. imagine a piece of parchment paper with lotion smeared on one side of it. it does stick to the skin, but not like you'd imagine when you picture a "wrap." i suppose if you had some saran wrap handy, you could use that to really secure it and that would be better. i didn't have saran wrap (hi, i live in a hotel) so i just put on a tight shirt and went with it.

the directions say to leave it on for 45 minutes, but i talked to this cashier who works at sally's the other day, and she swears by this itworks stuff and told me to keep it on the 24 hours. so that's what i did! it kind of shifted a little bit, and i would fix it, but overall i think it did a fairly decent job staying in place.

overall, i am pretty as peace with my stomach. i have a little bit of light stretch marks on my side and the skin on my upper stomach used to be tighter, but i had a baby and my body did a whole lot of stretching and i am pretty proud of how it's adjusted. my jeans are size 27 and i am generally a size 2/4 and one wrap barely covered my stomach and did not cover my hips. so if you wanted to do your whole stomach and your sides, someone my size would definitely have to order two wraps.

NOTE: i had sunless tanner on my stomach (obvi, my skin is not that color in real life) and the wrap rubbed it off...making my stomach kind of splotchy.

so here's the thing: does my stomach seem a little bit flatter in the after pictures? yeah, probably. but do i see a huge difference? no, probably not. and is this difference enough to get me to drop $100? again, probably not.

granted, this is only after one wrap and the recommended treatment is four wraps, but i just don't know if this is worth the itworks price. itworks charges $99 for four wraps, unless you want to sign up as a loyal customer and pay the initiation fee of $50 and then the wraps are $60 for four. you can also sign up as a "loyal customer" and pay something like $100 a month for three months. but you guys! that's a lot of money. maybe i am just a cheapskate, but if i'm paying $100 for something, it better knock my socks off. 

so the bottom line: my stretch marks are still there, my stomach doesn't feel any tighter, i doubt i've lost any inches, maybe it's a little flatter, but overall i'm just like wah-wah about it. the whole itworks thing just doesn't really make sense to me and no one has ever been able to explain the "how" of it all...they all say it has super natural awesome ingredients that absorb into the skin and make people lose inches...but no one says how?? where is the science of this? like the actual breakdown of how those super natural ingredients seemingly suck out your fat? what the heck?

i am no stranger to losing weight. in fact, i think i'm pretty good at it. i know what works for me and i know that it isn't easy; it's diet. you can't eat bonbons all day and then do a skinny wrap and expect to drop pounds. losing weight is a simple science: intaking fewer calories than what your body burns. that is how it's done, my friends. no tricks or magic wraps or easy ways out. salads and water and fruit and grilled chicken.

it's a hard knock life, i know.

thank you to barbara for sending me a wrap! to visit her site, click here.