Ulzzang Secrets to staying Slim~

Hey guys, I got a request as to how ulzzangs maintain/get their slim, petite bodies. So here it is!

The key point of an ulzzang’s body is her long, thin legs, and an ulzzang’s outfit and photo angle often are designed to emphasize these legs.

The slim legs of famous ulzzang Song Ah Ri

Okay, so how do we get the much-wanted ulzzang body? Well first, I’d like to tell you all that a great many ulzzangs have gotten plastic surgeries like liposuction and calf-reduction, so we can’t always say that ulzzangs have worked for their bodies like we will. However, I’m here to tell you today how you can get an ulzzang body naturally.

Ulzzangs get their perfect bodies through a lot of dieting and also maintaining a healthy lifestyle. I’ll go more into detail below:

1) Maintaining a healthy lifestyle

Already, Korean ulzzangs have an advantage on those of us who live in western countries, in terms of having a healthy lifestyle. To start off, the food they eat normally is already ten times healthier than what the normal meal is like in America, where I live. Let’s look a little closer-

This is what a typical korean meal looks like- which is really different from the typical western meal. Note that there are A LOT of dishes, but they are all small and are mostly vegetables. In the middle, we have some meat, but it’s a small portion and this looks like the table setting for two or three diners- which means each person eating this meal is getting only a little bit of the meat.

The Korean diet mostly consists of fish when it comes to meat. Fish is known for it’s Omega-3 Fatty Acid, and is really super healthy. A lot better than hamburger meat that we have in America. Most Korean side-dishes are boiled and drained vegetables. Koreans don’t eat many sugary foods, and they use garlic in a lot of their meals, which burns unwanted cholesterol and keeps them healthy. And of course, Koreans have their kimchi, which gives them nutrients from the cabbage, and the spicy-ness revs up their metabolisms.

Let’s look at a normal Western meal?:

Okay guys, this is legit what came up first when I typed “typical american meal” into the search bar, so don’t think I’m purposely picking this photo or anything. Look at that. Potatoes are a vegetable, yes, but frying them into salty fries mostly takes out all the nutrition in them, and you’re left with just carbohydrates. The hamburger is bread (carb), meat (protein and fat), cheese (calcium), and OH LOOK I see one lettuce leaf. There aren’t many (any) vegetables in this normal American meal, and I think it’s easy to see the difference between Korean cuisine and American.

So that is reason #1 Korean ulzzangs have such thin bodies- they already have the normal daily diet that is healthy and low on fattening things like sugars and carbohydrates, while in western cuisine, carbohydrates basically make up everything.

2) Diets

Of course, ulzzangs also diet- the healthy food choices in Korea mean nothing if you overeat (remember! overeating on anything, including healthy foods, can make you gain weight).

I honestly don’t believe in crash diets like all the kpop diets you hear about. I think that if you want to lose weight FOR GOOD, you have to undergo a lifestyle change. You need to train your body to eat better and you will naturally become slim. However, since some people may still like to hear about kpop diets and such, I will include them in this post, along with my Asian Diet tips.

KPOP diets:

Here are a few kpop diets I’ve heard over the years. If you want to follow them, go ahead.

• 9MUSES Paper Cup Diet: Basically, each meal is three paper cups full of food. The first cup is fruits and vegetables, the next has brown rice, and the last has korean side dishes. I’ve included a photo below so you can see the size of the cups in relation to their hands.
• Park Bom’s Water Diet: This diet can only last two or three days or else it becomes too harmful. Basically, you don’t eat anything AT ALL, and just fill your stomach with water.
• KARA Nicole’s Veggie Diet: You can only eat tofu, zucchinis, cauliflower, and carrots. To minimize the calories you get from oil, don’t cook the vegetables in oil and instead bake them like Nicole did.
• IU’s Diet: IU stated on a show that “I eat an apple for breakfast, a small amount of sweet potato and water for lunch, and drink protein shake for dinner.”
• There are also diets like the Banana Diet and the Watermelon Diet, where basically you only eat those foods for each meal (So basically, a Mono Diet).

My tips for losing weight and staying slim for the rest of your life:

1. Instead of having 3 big meals a day, have 5 little ones throughout the day. Each little meal should be lower in calories, and since you have more meals, you won’t feel hungry in between and eat a snack.
2. Drink water or green tea right before your meals. Not only are both these drinks SO good for you, they’ll also fill you up so you won’t eat as much.
3. Don’t have dinner 2-3 hours before you sleep. If you eat too close to when you sleep, your body won’t have time to digest all the food and when you fall asleep, your metabolism slloooowwws down and stores fat.
4. Eat slowly. It has been proven that your body sends “I’m full” signals to your brain 20 minutes after you take your first bite, not when you’re actually full. By eating slowly, you’ll consume less calories in the time it takes you to stop feeling hungry.
5. Only eat when you’re hungry. This seems like a no-brainer, but most people just snack when they like the food or when they feel bored or upset. Listen to your body.
6. Stop eating when you’re no longer hungry. There is no need to keep stuffing yourself until you can feel the fullness in your stomach, so just stop eating when you no longer feel hungry.
7. Replace, don’t cut out. A lot of dieters will fall off the boat because they miss a certain food too much (like cake or cookies or ice cream). Instead of cutting out these foods completely, find alternatives. Instead of cake, try a muesli bar and yogurt, and instead of ice cream, blend a frozen banana (this is actually SO good).
8. This is kind of contradictory to #7, but: If you want something, eat it. I didn’t know about this rule when I dieted the first time, and that ruined me because it messed up my self control. This rule means that if you really want something, have it- but only a little. Restricting too much will lead to dieting disaster, so treat yourself every once in a while.
9. When you are eating/cooking something with lots of oil, use a paper towel to blot off the oil on the surface. This reduces A LOT of calories, because oil is very calorie-dense. For example, blotting the top of your hamburger before eating it can cut a good 50 calories!
10. Of course, you must also incorporate into your daily routine some 20 minutes of cardiovascular exercise, 3-4 times a week. It is the tradition that a healthy weight loss program comprises of 80% diet and 20% exercise. I was once told that exercise shouldn’t be considered exercise unless the whole body was undergoing movement, but remember, every step still counts! Even those extra 5 minutes of walking from your car to the grocery store or an evening stroll around a nearby park after dinner.

I hope those ten diet tips will help all of you who are trying to lose weight, and I wish you the best! I have more tips, so if you want them, please comment below like “do another diet post” or something so I know you guys are interested!

-Quinn

Ulzzang Bodies

Notice: Those of you out there who want to look like an ulzzang, don’t feel pressured to look one specific way. Remember, the following post will detail the beauty standards of South Korea and their ulzzangs, and in no means am I trying to make you change the way you look because you feel you don’t fit their mold. Okay, now enjoy!

First, being slim is very important to South Koreans- and Asians in general. I will start off with a brief cultural explanation before we go into ulzzangs in specific. As someone who constantly travels among countries like Japan, Korea, and China, I find that the mentality towards body shape is far more rigid than it is in America, where I live. People are not afraid to tell each other things like “Oh, you’ve gained weight” because while it may seem like a rude thing to say in other places, it’s not in Asia. In America, we are all pro-you, saying “Every body shape is beautiful” and other things like that, but there is really one body type in Asia that Asians find attractive, which is unfortunate.

I will cut down Asian/ulzzang body standards for you:

1) Weight

Weight is one of the most important aspects of beauty for ulzzangs (my next post will be on all the “beauty requirements” ulzzangs have to fulfill, so stay tuned!). As looking like an ulzzang requires looking youthful, having slim legs and a slim waist is very important. Not only that, being thin allows for ulzzangs to show off their v-shaped jawlines (another staple of ulzzang beauty).

To be very honest here, all ulzzangs are underweight. Their BMIs all average out to be around 16.8, which is waaay under the healthy line (which cuts out at 18.5). This does NOT mean they are unhealthy. Asians tend to have thinner bone structures, which means our bones weigh less, and so I would weigh less than a Caucasian who looks the exact same weight as me.

This all goes back to the cultural aspect- in Korea, most people would say anyone above 50 kg (roughly 111 lb) is fat. (If you are over this weight, remember that Asians are also shorter than most Westerners, so don’t feel like this is degrading. And if you are Asian or short and are above this cut, remember it’s just a matter of personal opinion. If you love you’re body, you’re beautiful.) However, while this idea should only apply to petite girls, Korean girls who are very tall (around 170 cm) still try to stay under 50 kg. It’s a little brutal, but that’s unfortunately the beauty standard in Korea.

So yeah, if you want to fit the tradition ulzzang standard of beauty, I would advise being very slim. But if you’re comfortable with how you look right now, rock that body and start a new type of ulzzang! (After all, one of the most popular ulzzangs is Hong Young Gi, who is short and not as thin as other ulzzangs) ^^

2) Height

Honestly, height does not matter too much for an ulzzang- it’s all in how they play with their height to their advantage. For example, you have Hong Young Gi who is 146 cm (about 4 ft 9 inches) on one end and Choi Sooyoung who is 170 cm (5 ft 7 inches) on the other. Height isn’t that important, but an ulzzang’s body proportions based on her height is. An important point of attraction (besides the face, of course) is an ulzzang’s legs, and more often than not, they are long and slim.

3) S-line

I won’t go much into detail with this, but in Korea, and s-line is essentially the “s” shape a girl’s body makes with her boobs and butt. I’ll insert a picture below, but (sorry) I don’t have much I can say about this beauty idea.

See how the girl’s body makes an S shape? Korean ulzzangs sometimes purposely pose in ways that bring out their s-line.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post- I haven’t been on in a long time, and I hope I can start posting more. Next, I think I’ll be doing a post on ulzzang beauty “requirements” that they have to fulfill to be considered an ulzzang. If you would like me to post about losing weight, please comment, or else I won’t.

Remember, this is just the Korean standard of beauty and you can feel any way you want to about your body. You are beautiful, even if you don’t meet these crazy standards, and don’t forget that!

-Quinn