Women gather together at a friend’s home to wrap themselves with herbal cloths, each around different parts of their bodies — arms, legs, stomachs and chins. For the next hour, they sit around and relax, waiting for the botanical elements in the wraps to tighten their skin and rid them of cellulite.
Though body wraps have been around for a long time, they have only recently become a craze in Utah as men and women of all ages try to find an easy way to lose weight. Those who sell the wraps and throw “wrap parties” claim that these wraps will tighten and tone skin, helping the customer lose fat and cellulite after just one wrap session.
Rachael Newkirk, a personal consultant for It Works!, a company that sells wraps and other body products, has run multiple wrap parties in Utah. Wrap parties usually have about five people in attendance, including the host who wants to use the wrap and invites his or her friends over to use them as well. Newkirk then wraps the host and attendees at the beginning of the party and allows the guests to spend the next 45 minutes to an hour relaxing, after which Newkirk removes the wraps so the guests can see their results.
“The wraps tighten and firm and reduce cellulite and stretch marks on the skin,” Newkirk said. “You can expect to see progressive results over three days.”
Newkirk throws couple parties occasionally, but has found that about 80 percent of her clients are women.
One of her clients, Noel Mikula from York Haven, Pa., has seen great results from the wrap. She said when she wrapped her stomach four times with wraps a year ago, she went from a size eight to a size zero. After losing the weight, Mikula never had to change her exercise routine but kept her new size by continuing to exercise three times a week and eating a healthy diet.
Mikula continues to use the wraps on other parts of her body because she finds them so convenient.
“My favorite thing about the wraps is that I can do whatever I want when I have them on,” Mikula said. “I can sit on the couch for hours or go about my day. It’s so easy.”
Another client, Kara Hartman from Bloomsburg, Pa., has enjoyed using the wraps. Hartman was told that she needed to do a full treatment of four wraps to see results.
“I did a full treatment,” Hartman said. “I saw my stomach slowly get flatter and nice and defined. It got rid of my pouch and lifted it up.”
In addition to body wrap parties, many salons and spas offer full body wraps rather than having the client choose one area of the body to focus on. Taryn Maughan is the corporate educator for M’lis, a company that provides these wraps for salons.
“People can lose four to 14 inches per treatment and they are permanent as long as you maintain a healthy lifestyle,” Maughan said. “It’s permanent inch loss because it’s working internally. The inches lost are the toxins being lost so if you consume highly processed foods you would then be re-entering toxins back into your body and the inches would come back.”
