How to Lose Weight in Your Thighs

Since becoming a personal trainer, the top body part that I often hear complained about by various women are thighs-secondly to abs. Women are always wanting to “slim their thighs” or “get rid of thigh fat.”

Personally, when I was overweight, my thighs are what bothered me the most since my abs never gain any weight hardly. I am the body type that loves to gain weight in my lower half! I am not sure if that makes me lucky or not, to be honest lol.

“So, can you lose thigh fat and make your thighs slimmer?” Simply put, yes, you can. 

“But, I thought spot reduction was just a myth?” It is.

The tactics that require losing thigh fat will require you losing an overall body fat percentage, meaning you will lose weight all over-not just from your thighs. And to lose weight from all over, there are some specific things you must do.

You main focus will be on CARDIO and not much on using any weights. Remember this. I love running intervals on the treadmill or running uphill outside. If you are not sweating, you are not working hard enough. Also, aim for doing HIIT exercises that keep your body guessing so it never gets too “comfortable.”

Try this 20 minute treadmill workout I created next time you are at the gym:

As far as HIIT exercises go, here are a few good options:

• High Knees
• Burpees
• Mountain Climbers
• Jump Squats
• Lunge Kicks
• Jumping Rope
• Box Jumping
• Butt Kicks

Weights make you muscles grow while cardio leans out your muscles. If you do not care about muscle growth and want to be completely lean, then stop using added weights-bodyweight exercises are totally fine, however!

Secondly, there are a few moves you will want to avoid such as weighted squats and lunges. Why? These grow your legs and glutes. If you want to thin out your thighs, it simply does not make sense to do them. The added weight will create tension on your muscle, thus cause them to work harder the next set which leads to hypertrophy (increased muscle size).

Here are 7 of my favorite thigh slimming moves that you can try at home:

Skinny fat... sounds like an oxymoron, huh? Well, the “skinny” refers to having relatively low levels of lean muscle mass and the “fat” refers to having too much body fat. And when you combine these things–too little muscle and too much fat–you get the “skinny fat” look.

Take my unedited photos below for example. After having my son, it took me a while to get back into the groove of things. My diet was ok and my workouts were not very consistent. Needless to say, but the time my fitness shoot came around, I was anything BUT ready for it physically. After seeing the unedits, I decided to kick my ass into shape and by the next shoot (right photo), I had leaned up and gained muscle-while slimming down. You can see the tone moreso in my legs and that the cellulite and fat had decreased as well.

A third thing you have got to remember when losing thigh fat is DIET. If your diet is not on point, you won’t lose any fat from anywhere. To decrease body fat, I would suggest following a lower carb (notice I did not say “low-carb”) diet, aiming for lean protein at each and every meal. Also, stay away from processed foods-typically SUGAR. SUGAR is the enemy. Increase your water intake to promote fat burning.

Your daily diet should look something like this:

Your trainer and friend,