Step This Way For A Better Bottom
There is no secret to fat-burning: barring any health conditions that affect your hormones or metabolism, eating less and exercising more is the best strategy. You can further maximize results by doing the right kinds of exercise and eating the right foods. So what direction do you need to go in to improve the size and shape of your buttocks and thighs?
First things first, it’s a big fat no to crash diets. They aren’t healthy and they won’t get you longterm results. Although you might want to see slimmer thighs ASAP, slow and steady is the way to go for weight loss (if that’s your aim), with a plan to lose around 1 to 2 pounds per week as a longterm goal.
In the first few days or weeks of a weight-reduction diet, your body isn’t just burning fat, but also stored carbohydrate and protein — as well as water that is bound with the two.
However, you can’t control where you lose fat first. As you lose fat and body mass, some of it will come from your desired areas, but it will also come from other places, such as your face and arms. However, you can support your diet plan and influence the shape and muscle tone of your thighs and glutes with the right exercises.
You can do as much exercise as you want, but you won’t lose thigh and glute fat if your diet isn’t on point. Invest in a good fitness tracker and keep your calorie intake below your calorie expenditure. This calorie deficit causes your body to tap into fat stores for energy.
But don’t go too low. You need adequate calories and nutrients to support your overall health and energy levels. Eat clean, whole foods as much as possible, which will make calorie tracking even easier. In fact, when you eat clean – think fresh vegetables and lean protein – you may not even need to track your calories.
Focus on high-quality protein as it’s said to be more effective for fat mass loss. This is likely because it was also the most effective at maintaining lean muscle mass, which is often lost at greater rates during calorie reduction.
Best Exercise for Fat Loss
Knowing what to do to lose glute and thigh fat and actually doing it are two different things. The truth is that the biggest key to fat loss is behaviour change and doing the work that’s required to lose a significant amount of fat.
With exercise, the harder you work the more results you will get. Walking on a treadmill for 30 minutes three or four days a week is a great place to start, but you will eventually need to up the intensity, frequency and duration, and add in some strength training.
If you’re currently walking, try jogging, then work your way up to running, at least for short periods of time during your walk. Interval training in which you alternate intense bursts of activity such as sprinting for 30 to 60 seconds with a period of recovery, is a very effective fat loss route. It’s said that interval training is 28.5% more effective at burning fat than steady-state moderate-intensity exercise.
Circuit training, which involves high-intensity strength training and cardio exercise at the same time, is also one of the most effective — and time efficient — fat-loss workouts.
Short spurts of weightlifting and cardio interspersed with brief periods of rest cause you to burn far more calories in an hour than you would jogging for 30 minutes and using weight machines for 30 minutes.
To target your thighs and glutes, trainers often recommend using heavier weights than you’re used to — maybe a barbell — and doing compound exercises such as squats, deadlifts, step-ups and lunges. These exercises target the thighs and glutes and require many of your large muscles to work at once, which increases your calorie burn.
And don’t worry about ‘bulking up’. Repetition ranges of 8 to 12 with a challenging weight will encourage glutes and thighs to become more shapely as you burn fat, not bigger.
