Best Bathing Suits to Hide Your FUPA

Who doesn’t want to have a flat belly? Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to keep lower belly fat away these days for various reasons, such as the sedentary nature of our culture, a poor diet, genetics, or being postpartum.

So many people have a bit of a stomach pooch that there is even a term for it: FUPA. The acronym FUPA stands for “Fat Upper Pubic Area”, which is aptly named because it describes exactly what’s going on – an accumulation of fat in one’s lower abdomen.

Most of the time, it’s quite easy to hide one’s FUPA through clothing. However, if you ever plan to go swimming, suddenly you will feel quite exposed in only a bathing suit. Thankfully, there are bathing suits designed to hide one’s stomach pooch so that you can look your best at the beach or pool.

The best bathing suits that hide FUPA are ones that utilize extra fabric in their design. Ideally, you want ones that are high-waisted, with thin stripes or small patterns, ruffled, or loose-fitting. You can also utilize accessories like a hat, cover ups, or wedge sandals to accentuate other areas of your body, drawing attention away from your tummy, if not obscuring it completely.

In this article, we will go over our top recommendations for bathing suits that hide FUPA. We will also discuss how FUPA occurs and various ways that you can reduce it so that you can go to the beach or pool without worrying about a belly pooch.

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What is FUPA?

To be clear, FUPA is just a term people have coined in reference to the accumulation of belly fat on their lower abdomen. It is not a scientific term (thank God), and honestly, I find it a bit embarrassing to say the acronym aloud. I personally prefer the terms stomach pooch, belly pooch, or just lower belly fat, but I guess I need to get with the jargon of the times.

Unfortunately, FUPA is not the only problem that you need to worry about. If enough fat accumulates then it causes stretch marks on your skin. Furthermore, even if you do lose the fat at some point, you now might have some loose skin that gives you an unsightly paunch.

Lastly, though this article focuses primarily on tips for women, men can also get FUPA. However, there are more factors that affect women than men, so women are more likely to experience FUPA.

How to hide FUPA in a bathing suit?

If you have FUPA, you may feel very exposed being in a swimsuit because of how form-fitting and revealing it is. Don’t worry, there are some ways you can hide your stomach even in a bathing suit while still looking very tasteful. Here are a few tips:

• Wear a one-piece bathing suit. One piece bathing suits offer the most coverage, so they are the safest option. Two-piece bathing suits like a bikini obviously don’t cover much up, and even a tankini is unreliable because it can float up.
• Choose darker colors. Darker colors have a slimming effect, whereas lighter colors seem to do the opposite. Furthermore, there is less of a chance of a bathing suit becoming see-through when soaked if you’re wearing a darker colored one.
• Look for smaller patterns and thin stripes. Smaller patterns and thin stripes also seem to have a slimming effect. Conversely, bigger patterns or thicker lines on a swimsuit make you look wider.
• Look for styles that conceal your midsection. We recommend bathing suits that use more fabric in their designs, such as a ruched or ruffled swimsuit. If you want to wear a two-piece swimsuit, look for ones with a high-waisted bottom so that it will not float up.
• Use other beachwear to cover yourself up. A very comfortable and fashionable piece to accompany your bathing suit is a cover up. It’s great for extra sun protection, skin coverage, and making it socially acceptable for you to walk around into stores with a bathing suit. You can also wear a hat or drape a towel over your stomach when sitting/laying down.

Best bathing suits to hide FUPA

With the tips above in mind, we went and found the bathing suits that satisfied these criteria. These are the best bathing suits to hide FUPA:

Ruffled one-piece bathing suit

The extra fabric from the layers and layers of ruffles in the front of this stylish swimsuit will do an excellent job of hiding any tummy bulge. There is also additional padding in the bra area for comfort and support while you’re enjoying your time at the beach.

Floral print halter bathing suit

This floral print halter bathing suit literally looks like the kind of sundress that you can wear to a brunch date on a cozy Sunday afternoon. It comes with a cinched waist and flared dress design that slims your waist and makes you look like a dream. You will get tons of the good kind of attention wearing this.

Cross back one-piece

Sometimes simple is best, and that’s what I love about this bathing suit. It has an elegant kind of simplicity, a certain chicness that is unassuming, yet you don’t want to take your eyes off of. This one-piece suit comes in a variety of colors. What makes it stand out is its flat front with built-in tummy control that accentuates your shape while providing a slimming effect.

High V-neck bathing suit

If you’re not comfortable with showing too much skin, then this V-neck bathing suit will provide the coverage you need while still providing a cute look. It offers a lot of coverage at the front, wtih just a little bit of see-through mesh in the chest region for breathability (and to tease the boys a little bit). It also has a nice A-line design that will complement any figure.

Ruffled flounce top

If you want a two-piece swimsuit to hide your tummy bulge, look no further than this adorable ruffled flounce top. The extra fabric is flattering and does a fantastic job of covering your torso. As a second layer of protection, the high-waisted bottom can also easily conceal FUPA on its own. It also feels extremely comfortable since it’s not super form-fitting at all.

Tummy control tankini

This tummy control tankini looks like you’re wearing a corset to the beach. How regal! This bathing suit comes with a bandeau, a built-in padded bra, and even a lace up that lets you enhance your curves without revealing too much skin. If you want to feel elegant, sexy, and supported, all while keeping your stomach hidden, then this is the bathing suit for you.

Sporty tankini

Do you prefer a tankini that is less frilly and more sporty? Then this tankini should be right up your alley. There are a ton of colors and patterns to choose from, plus the material is stretchy and comfortable. There are three pieces to this bathing suit: a sports bra, tanktop, and boy shorts. These combine to give you a sporty look while providing excellent coverage, especially around the midsection.

Polka-dot swimdress

This polka-dot swimdress is cute and even comes with boyshorts. It features a tummy control design that obscures your tummy and helps you look slimmer at the same time. The polka-dots are small and numerous, which passes our criteria for a slimming pattern.

What causes FUPA and how to prevent it?

Wearing a bathing suit to hide your FUPA doesn’t solve the problem directly. Plus, if your FUPA is bad enough, there may come a point when there is nothing you can do to hide it. Thus, use these FUPA hiding bathing suits as a band-aid solution while working towards an actual solution.

To better understand how to get rid of FUPA, you need to first understand what causes it. Some of these factors are within our power to change, but some factors we have little to no control over, which can be frustrating. Let’s start with the things that we have some control over and move on to the things we have little to no control over.

Rapid weight gain and loss

Problem:

If you put on some weight during the holidays and haven’t lost it all by the time summer comes around, you may have a little bit of FUPA action going on. Similarly, if you gained a lot of weight but then you lose it all over a short period of a few weeks or a couple of months, you could end up with loose skin above your pubic area.

What happens during weight gain is that your skin will stretch out to accommodate the excess fat cells. If you gradually gain weight and then gradually lose weight, this gives your skin enough to slowly stretch out and then shrink, leaving no stretch marks or loose skin.

The problem arises when your weight gain and subsequent weight loss is rapid. This can happen if you eat foods that are excessively high in calories and not burning off enough of it through exercise. Then, in order to lose the weight, you go on a massive caloric deficit (akin to starving yourself) while doing tons of cardio to burn calories.

Doing these things in a short period of time can lead to not just FUPA, but unsightly stretch marks and possibly loose skin as well if you manage to lose the weight. In both cases, you can end up with what looks like a stomach pouch.

Solution:

Thankfully, unless you have some kind of medical condition, you have direct control over your weight gain and loss. Choosing to eat more fruits and vegetables, reducing the amount of carbs and fried/oily foods you eat, as well as eating smaller portions of food will result in weight loss if you have excess fat to burn, and prevent weight gain if you’re already lean.

Furthermore, you can also add in 15-30 minutes of walking everyday to burn some extra calories. This can be as easy as going for a quick walk around the neighborhood, the park, or a nearby trail.

If you take the bus, try getting off one stop early and walk home from there. If you live in an apartment, try walking up and down the stairs instead of taking the elevator. There are many practical ways you can encourage yourself to walk.

Since this article is about bathing suits, we would be remiss not to mention swimming laps or even just treading water as a form of exercise. Don’t worry, no one is going to notice your FUPA when you’re underwater and aggressively exercising.

As you can see, you have a lot of control over this aspect of your weight. No, you don’t need to join a gym or become a protein shake chugging fitness freak. Eating a cleaner diet and exercising is not only conducive to preventing and getting rid of FUPA, but to a happier, healthier life as well.

Stress and anxiety

Problem:

Being stressed out and anxious can negatively impact your physical health, and one such way is by causing an increase in a hormone called cortisol. This hormone has been linked to fat deposition, and this can occur in the abdomen.

Solution:

Unfortunately, simply knowing that stress and anxiety can lead to increased fat accumulation does not help you fix the problem. For example, you could work a stressful, demanding job, or you may have to shoulder a lot of responsibility in your household, or there could be record-setting rises in inflation, and these are not things you can just suddenly stop worrying about or easily change.

That said, we want to focus our efforts on the things that are within our control. Once again, exercising is a great way for you to feel better because it can cause the brain to release chemicals called endorphins, which reduces your perception of pain. Furthermore, exercise burns calories which directly solves the problem of having too much fat in your lower abdomen, so it kills two birds with one stone.

Other than that, perhaps you need to consider a career change, or a change in environment to a less stressful one, but that’s obviously easier said than done.

Many people turn to recreational drug use to help themselves relax. I don’t recommend that, as not only can it be a gateway to even more drug use, but alcohol is high in calories and marijuana can give you the munchies, both of which will lead to more weight gain.

If you truly cannot change anything about your current situation, then you must change your perception of your situation and learn to accept it in order to reduce stress and anxiety. Consider reading about Stoic philosphy and see if some of its principles can be applied to your life. This is a lot of work, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do to look good in a swimsuit, right?

Pregnancy

Problem:

You already know how taxing on the body it is to be pregnant. What’s happening inside your body, other than the miracle of life, is that the abdominal muscles are expanding and separating vertically down the middle to make room for the baby. Additionally, pregnancy hormones are causing your tissues to relax and expand.

As your belly grows bigger, the abdominal skin will stretch to its limits (look at pictures of women pregnant with twins, triplets, or the octomom if you dare) to accommodate your bundle of joy. Once you give birth, it is possible for your stretched out skin to be loose, creating a hanging pauch.

Solution:

Other than deciding not to ever go through a pregnancy, which is not a solution for most women, there’s not much you can control in terms of the size of your belly while pregnant, and how much loose skin there is afterwards.

Over time, your belly and loose skin should slowly return to normal after giving birth. It’s not unusual for women to gain a lot of weight during pregnancy because of how much nutrients and energy a mother’s body requires to nourish the baby while it is gestating.

To facilitate a fast recovery and to ensure that none of that excess fat lingers after childbirth, once again, the solution is to continue to eat healthy and exercise. Swimming and treading water is an effective and low-impact way to exercise without stressing out your joints. In fact, it may be one of the only exercises that you can still do while pregnant.

Until your loose skin and large tummy starts to subside, you may need a specialized bathing suit to cover up your postpartum belly.

Genetics

Problem:

Your genetics affect your body shape, including where your body stores fat and how much is stored. Depending on who you ask, it is believed that even your personality is affected by genetics.

You can choose to view this information from two different lenses: glass half-full or half-empty. For people who see the glass as half-empty, they are extremely frustrated at how seemingly little control they have over their appearance and possibly even life choices, because maybe they were genetically predisposed to be like that. It may drive them to make extreme choices to fight against the cards they were dealt.

The glass half-full people, upon hearing that much of their life is dictated by their genetics, including where they store their fat and how they look, may feel a weight lifted off their shoulders. They say, “No wonder diet and exercise don’t work for me, I am just genetically predisposed to look this way!” Using that as an excuse, or perhaps learning to accept who they are and how they look, they then proceed to not worry about things out of their control and move on with their life.

Either way, genetics play a huge part in how you look, which can explain why many people have FUPA and can’t seem to do anything about it.

Solution:

Unfortunately, there is nothing one can do about their genetics, which can be disheartening for people who are predisposed to certain health conditions. We have not advanced technologically enough that we can alter our genetics to get rid of any undesirable traits, à la Gattaca (1997), plus there are a whole bunch of ethical concerns regarding this.

However, advances in the medical field have made it possible to drastically alter the human body. For example, if you have poor eyesight, you can get laser eye surgery to have better than 20/20 eyesight. Or, more relevant to the topic at hand, if you have loose skin or excess fat, you can have the skin and fat surgically removed via liposuction.

If surgery is too invasive or costly, you can try various weight loss supplements, though their effectiveness is often called into question. Rather than rely on miracle drugs or fad diets, it is better to foster a healthy relationship with a low-carb diet and regular exercise instead.

In short, even if you have “bad” genetics, your solutions don’t really change. You still have to do what you can via exercise, diet, and being smart about what you wear, which is why you found this article in the first place. Thankfully, there are many tummy control swimsuits that are available that can hide FUPA and give you back some confidence.

Last update on 2024-03-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API