How To Burn Fat on Hips & Thighs
Losing weight can be a difficult task when one is overweight, but even more so when one is already in good shape. Both for those who are overweight and in relatively good shape, body fat tends to accumulate and linger in certain problem areas that resist fat burning more stubbornly than others. In women especially, fat tends to accumulate around the hips and thighs, and many women find that fat reserves in those places are the most difficult to get rid of.
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Instructions
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Limit calorie intake. Some call it dieting, while others call it portion control. But whatever you call it, eating healthy and keeping control of calorie intake is a must when trying to burn fat on any part of the body. Losing weight and burning fat is a matter of expending more calories than the body takes in each day. By limiting the amount of calories you eat, the body cannot derive all the energy it needs from your diet, so it begins to burn fat to compensate.
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Eat a hearty breakfast in the morning, and less food later in the day. Breakfast is often referred to as the most important meal for a reason. Eating breakfast sparks the metabolism, which enables the body to more easily burn calories throughout the day. The body is like a furnace, and metabolism is the heat of the furnace: The higher it gets, the faster it will burn the fuel.
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Get regular aerobic exercise. While limiting calories and optimizing the body's metabolism are first steps toward burning fat, nothing gets the body burning calories like prolonged exercise. High intensity exercise can also burn calories quickly, but it is usually too difficult to sustain. A less intense aerobic exercise that goes on for a longer period of 30 to 60 minutes will usually maximize calorie burning. Cardiovascular activities such as jogging, swimming, rowing, spinning, yoga and elliptical machine exercises are all great ways to burn calories. No cardio exercise has a definitive advantage over another to target the hips and thighs: It's all about burning overall calories. Mixing up cardio workouts is a good way to keep workouts fresh and interesting. To start, aim to get at least 30 minutes of continuous aerobic exercise three to four times a week.
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Increase exercise intensity and duration to further results. Having a regular exercise routine is great and will probably get you in decent shape, but being content with a given level of fitness might not be enough to get rid of problem fat on the hips and thighs. You might literally have to go the extra mile to get rid of it: Extend your workouts and push yourself harder and faster. Doing light lifting exercises at high repetitions to increase muscular endurance and tone can help increase the rate of calorie burn, as well as sculpt a fit body under the fat, which will be revealed more and more as the fat melts away. General exercises including crunches, push-ups, pull-ups, chin-ups, squats, leg curls and calf raises will all help build overall muscular strength and create energy-hungry muscles that burn more calories.
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Tips & Warnings
Getting rid of fat in problem areas is not simply a matter of working out the muscles that lie under the fat. Fat is reduced by the body's need for additional energy. Sometimes working out the muscles under fat can make the area appear more slightly by giving it some shape, but other times the increased muscle mass just makes the area look bigger and fatter. Doing some exercises that focus on muscles in the hips and legs--wall sits, squats, lunges, glute presses and hip extensions/flexions, for example--is a good idea so that they are nicely toned as fat burns away. However, do not rely on such exercises as the primary way to burn fat.
