If your recent diet effort hasn’t quite gotten you to your ideal weight yet – take heart.  This week’s lesson will show you simple dressing tricks to make you look at least 10 pounds thinner … instantly.

Most of these tricks apply to all the body types, so whether you’re an hourglass, triangle, rectangle, inverted or circle – get set to look and feel more sleek and svelte TODAY!

But first you may want to let go of a few things you already “know” about dressing slim – ‘cause they may not be as valuable as you have been led to believe.

Meet my friend Nancy, demonstrating lots of potential for dressing thinner:

Let’s see what happens when we apply a few simple guidelines:

#1 – A column of color lets your eye move easily up and down your figure.  So unbuttoning that sweater will move the vision line away from Nancy’s hips.  The darker color of the column is particularly slimming - but this dark brown is just as minimizing as the traditional black and a lot more flattering to Nancy's coloring.  Navy blue, charcoal gray, forest green, dark burgandy or any other deep color would work equally well.

#2 – Accessories tell your eye where to focus – so adding a vertical scarf will reinforce the up-and-down, lengthening illusion.

#3 – Too-long sleeves  pull attention downward.  Pushing up the sweater sleeves (and holding them in place all day with sleeve bands) will lift the attention and trim your silhouette.

#4 – Narrow, rounded or sloping shoulders allow attention to go right to figure challenge areas like hips, tummy, upper arms or full bust.  Adding a subtle (removable) foam shoulder shaper is a MUST for almost every woman who wants to look taller and trimmer. The only exceptions are small-busted inverted triangles – and there aren’t very many of those.  This concept is so important we’ll explore it in more detail next week.

#5 – High-vamp shoes cover the top of Nancy’s foot, making her legs look shorter and her whole body look heavier.  Changing to a low-vamp shoe can effortlessly add 3” of visual leg length.  High-vamp shoes are great with pants ... but with skirts: not so much.

#6 – Emphasis around your face nearly always minimizes body fullness, so you’ll want to follow Nancy’s lead and fluff your hairstyle, brighten your makeup a bit and add  statement earringsto even your every-day look.

#7 - You can't see them, but you can see their effect.  A better bra keeps Nancy's "girls" higher and perkier, while Body Shaper panty hose ( like Great Shapes from www.NoNonsense.com) firm up any lumps and bumps below the waist.

Take a look at Nancy’s new slimmed-down style:

Assignment: now it’s your turn to apply these same techniques to your personal style.  If you need the removable foam shoulder pads or sleeve bands, just email me for a set – they’re $10 each.