How to Lose Thigh Fat

Losing thigh fat can only be done successfully with a combination of diet and exercise. Getting in shape and eating right also means that you'll see fat loss in other parts of your body. If you're serious about dropping a few pounds in your thighs and elsewhere, read on.

Steps

Thigh-Targeted Exercises

1. Do squats. There are tons of different squat exercises you can do, but the basic idea is this: With your legs shoulder-width apart, lower your bum down to the ground until your thighs are parallel with the ground. Balance here for three seconds before pushing up.^[1]
   
   
   
   • Try doing squats with an exercise ball. Place the ball against the wall with your lower back firmly pressed against the ball. Not only will the ball increase the intensity of the squat--it will also give you a nice back rub!
2. Do lunges. With a 5- or 8-pound dumbbell in each hand, lunge forward with one leg and bring the opposite knee about an inch above the ground. Step back and continue with the opposite leg.and draw it in so that it lightly taps the back of your right knee. Extend the left leg out again. Repeat with the other leg.^[2]
   
   
   

Eating Well and Dieting

1. Hydrate while cutting out excessive sweets from your liquid diet. Stick with water. Water is healthy, plentiful, cheap, and actually tastes good. Water flushes out harmful toxins, carries nutrients to cells, and provides a moist environment for bodily tissues that need it. Doctors recommend drinking 64 ounces of fluid per day, or about .^[3]
   
   
   
   • Avoid sodas, energy drinks, concentrated juices, etc.They're a weakness for us all, but they make shaving off those pounds really difficult. All of these drinks have tons of sugar in them, sometimes as much as 300 calories^[4], which can negate a whole workout.
   • Drink green tea for a great source of antioxidants and negligible calories.^[5]Green tea contains about ten times the polyphenols as most other veggies, and assists the body in protecting its cells from free radicals. Best of all, tea contains 1-2 calories per liter, which means that a simple cup of tea (unsweetened) is about as guilt-free as it gets!
   • Drink a cup of tea or a glass of water right before you eat a meal. This will trick your body into believing it's more full than it actually is, meaning that your cravings will be lower and you'll be inclined to eat less during a meal.
2. Eat healthy. You do not need to go on a diet in order to eat healthy. Simply watching what you eat will help you to slim down and get fit. When eating healthy you should consider what sort of items from each food group you should be eating. Try to eat balanced meals every time you sit down to eat.^[6]
   
   
   
   • Carbohydrates: Complex carbs are absorbed more slowly by your body so they don’t overload your system. These include oats, whole-wheat products, and unprocessed grains such as brown rice.
   • Protein: Choose lean meat when getting your protein intake. Lean meats include fish and poultry. Other forms of good protein include beans, soy products, and nuts.
   • Fruits and vegetables: While it may be hard to believe, there are actually better fruits and veggies than others (though they are all pretty darn good for you.) Look for super foods like kale, blueberries, and swiss chard.
   • Good fats vs. bad fats: Omega 3 fatty acid and monounsaturated fats are good for your system and will actually help you lower your cholesterol. Nuts, olive oil, seed oil, and fish all contain these ‘good fats.’ Trans and saturated fats are the things that will make your thighs larger. These include most processed food, candy, cakes, etc.
   • Dairy: Try to stick to low-fat dairy products. Yogurt is especially great, as it contains bacteria that help you digest and process food efficiently. Dairy products are also a good source of protein and calcium.^[7]
3. Consider a low-carbohydrate (Atkins) diet. The theory is that overweight people eat too many carbohydrates. A diet rich in carbs causes the body to release insulin.^[8] The body controls the insulin by producing glucose (sugar), which eventually gets converted into fat. The low-carb diet structures your meals around proteins, soy-products, vegetables, fruits and nuts to avoid this. While you want to limit the amount of carbs you eat, you don't want to completely cut them out of your diet. Try to have carbs at least 20% of the time. Your body does need glucose in order to function, and carbs are a good source for that. Foods that are allowed^[9] as part of the low-carb diet:
   
   
   
   • Unprocessed, high-protein meats, such as beef, lamb, pork, chicken, and turkey.
   • Unprocessed, high-protein fish, such as salmon, tuna, mackerel, and trout.
   • Low-carbohydrate vegetables and leafy greens.
   • Full-fat, unprocessed cow, goat, or sheep's milk cheeses.
4. Know what foods are not allowed in a low-carb diet. Foods that are not allowed as part of the low-carb diet include:
   
   
   
   • Grains. No pasta, bread, cakes, or pastries.
   • Fruits and fruit juices.
   • Processed foods. These usually have added sugar in them.
   • Starchy vegetables. No potatoes, beets, or corn.
   • Sugar or margarine.
5. Consider a low-calorie diet. If you burn more calories than you take in, you'll lose weight. The low-cal diet^[10] means reducing your intake to between 1,200 and 1,500 calories per day for women. It is recommended if you want to lose no more than 2 pounds per week. It is not safe to attempt to lose more than 2 pounds per week unless under strict doctor supervision.
   
   
   
   • Limit the amount of fat that you eat to between 35 and 60 grams per day. This means that fats should make up about 20% to 35% of your entire calories for the day.
   • Aim to eat about 170 to 240 grams of complex carbohydrates like whole grains, vegetables, and fruits per day. This should make up about 45% to 65% of your entire calories for the day.
   • Aim to eat about 55 to 95 grams of low-fat protein, which includes meat, poultry, and fish per day. This should account for about 15% to 25% of your total calorie intake for the day.
6. Consider a ketogenic (keto) diet. Keto diets are like low-carb diets in that you're trying to avoid eating carbohydrates by substituting fats and proteins into your diet. The difference is that Keto diets are higher in fat and lower in protein that the Atkins diet.
   
   
   
   • Why fats instead of protein? If you eat too much protein, your body turns the excess protein into glucose, which is what you were trying to avoid in carbs in the first place. On the other hand, fats have no effect on blood sugar and insulin levels.
   • Shoot to get about 70-75% of calories from fat, 20-25% from protein, and 5-10% from carbohydrates.^[11] Limit the amount of carbs you eat to between 20 and 50 grams per day.
   • Since being strict about how many carbs you eat is an essential part of the keto diet, it's important to understand how to count carbs correctly. Invest in a carb counter guide and study it.

Maintaining Physical Health

1. Exercise your whole body. Without getting too technical, the body loses fat by converting it into usable energy. This process is called ketosis.^[12] But when your body converts fat into energy, it loses fat from all over, not just in a specific place like your thighs. So in order to work away that thigh fat, you have to work out your entire body.
   
   
   
2. Get a solid full body workout at the gym. If you want a full-body workout that burns a lot of calories but is relatively safe on your joints, try biking or swimming.^[13] These are recommended specifically for people suffering from arthritis or nursing a serious injury. Spin those legs or work those laps for an hour at least three times a week.
   
   
   
3. Play a sport. Joining a recreational or competitive league, or merely playing with friends, can make a huge difference in burning calories. We're more motivated to participate in sports for social and competitive reasons. This means we're much more likely to play for the entire game and burn more calories than we are to give up when the workout becomes hard.
   
   
   
   • If you don’t like playing sports but still want to work out in a group, form a workout group with your friends. Set a gym schedule every week and help each other stick to it. You can also get exercise videos like Insanity or P90X and do them at your house with your friends. Just make sure to keep each other on track.
4. Know what sort of exercise burns less or more calories. Sadly, yoga and Pilates are not great for burning lots of calories, so don't rely on them exclusively. Yoga and Pilates burn about 200 calories per hour^[14], compared to about 800 calories burned by playing competitive basketball.^[15] If you're serious about losing thigh fat, but seriously devoted to yoga, work another program into your calorie-busting routine.
   
   
   
5. Walk when you can. If you do nothing else, walk. Walking is an overlooked and underrated exercise. Depending on your weight and your pace, you can burn anywhere from 100-400 calories per hour walking.^[16] And as we all know, walking doesn't take it out of you like running, biking, or swimming does. Find a walking partner and work on burning calories together!
   
   
   
6. Make sure you're getting your beauty rest. With all this working out, you should feel exhausted and worn out. (That's a good sign!) The great part is that getting enough sleep can also help you lose weight. That's right: Sleeping enough can help you lose weight.
   • When your body doesn't get enough sleep, it produces a hormone called ghrelin and lowers levels of another hormone called leptin.^[17] Leptin tells your brain when you are full, and ghrelin stimulates your appetite. In other words, when you don't get enough sleep, your body has a bigger appetite and your brain doesn't send as many signals to your body that it's full.
   • People with sleep apnea, which causes breathing cessation for periods of time during the night, are also more likely to be overweight.^[18] If you think you have sleep apnea, it's a good idea to get it checked out by a doctor so that your sleep starts paying off.

Tips

• Stand don't sit. Standing burns calories, sitting stores them. The easiest way to burn calories is to start standing more often. Try walking around while watching TV, or talking on the phone. It most definitely cannot replace exercise but it's an extra.
• Eat more vegetables than junk food, replacing bad food with healthy food. You can also try the "mountain climbers" exercise to lose thigh fat.
• Drink a lot of water during the day that way you have less room for food, which can help you lose weight.

Warnings

• Do not starve yourself in order to lose weight. Starving yourself makes your metabolism go even slower, as it prepares itself for possibly a long time without food and stores up fat reserves. Aside from not being an effective weight loss routine, it's extremely unhealthy.

Sources and Citations

Related wikiHows

• How to Lose Upper Thigh Weight
• How to Take an Inch off Your Thighs
• How to Lose Flab on Thighs
• How to Lose Weight Fast
• How to Burn Fat Without Losing Muscle

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