Strengthening and toning your thigh muscles can be beneficial in several ways. For instance, having more muscular thighs will improve your overall stability speed and help you jump higher. Besides, toning up your fat legs will boost your overall muscle and cardiovascular health.
That said, knowing how to reduce thigh size is one of the best ways to tone up fat legs. But, what are the best leg fat exercises to help you achieve that? Does walking tone your legs?
Take it easy! This guide will show you multiple exercises, including walking and other techniques for strengthening and toning your legs. More notably, these workouts focus more on leg endurance and strength than other parts of the body.
First, you're probably wondering, why are my thighs so fat? Let's start from there!
What Causes Thigh Fat?
The human body converts excess calories into fat. Where this fat is stored is determined by factors such as body type, genetics, and gender. For example, Women often store excess body fat in their thighs, lower bellies, and hips. On the contrary, men mainly store the fat in the abdomen and have fat thighs.
The WHO (World Health Organization) claimed increased consumption of energy-dense foods and decreased physical activities. This energy imbalance is one of the significant causes of weight gain, including fat thighs.
Two types of cells are responsible for storing body fat in the thighs and legs. That is intramuscular and subcutaneous fat cells. Subcutaneous fat cells are right beneath your skin and are associated with fewer long-term health problems. On the contrary, intramuscular cells are found in the leg area, dispersed within the leg muscles. This includes muscles in the thighs and legs like gastrocnemius, hamstrings, adductors, quadriceps, and tibialis anterior soleus.
How to Decrease Thigh Size?
Most people wish to know how to lose butt and thigh fat. Unfortunately, it's impossible to lose body fat in just one spot of your body. Instead, the best leg exercises to lose thigh fat involve several techniques that support overall weight loss.
Some of these strategies include:
1. Walking
Walking is one of the most underrated workouts for toning up fat legs. Yet it's very effective at helping you to trim thigh fat and tone your legs. Besides, it's an essential exercise that you can incorporate into your fitness routine right away. You can walk on a treadmill, take your pet for a walk, walk to the shop, and so on.
According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control & Prevention), walking is one of the best low-impact workouts for beginners. So, if you're starting to tone or shape your body, walking is a great exercise regardless of your fitness level.
But, how does walking reduce thigh size?
Fitness experts claim that brisk walking offers multiple benefits as far as exercises that get rid of thigh fat are considered.
To start, you don't need advanced fitness equipment to begin walking. Instead, you only need to put on a pair of walking/sports shoes, and you're set to go. More notably, walking helps to decrease thigh size in several ways. As an example, walking tones your hamstrings, quadriceps, and calves. Moreover, walking can help to improve your mood.
Many studies show that walking can make you healthier and fitter. A study conducted at the University of Virginia, for instance, displayed that women who performed 3 shorter, fast-paced walks every week lost 5 times more belly fat compared to those who strolled at a moderate speed 5 days per week.
Another benefit of brisk walking is that it boosts your metabolism rate. In other words, walking at a faster pace triggers your body to use the stored fat to release energy. This process increases your basal metabolic rate and builds muscles. Consequently, your body burns a large number of calories throughout the day, even when you stop exercising.
In addition to helping you lose thigh weight, walking will enhance your heart health. At the same time, The Stroke Association claims that brisk walking for 30 min every day reduces the risk of getting a stroke by 27% and regulates high blood pressure.
⦿ How long does it take to tone legs on the treadmill?
The amount of time needed to tone your legs by walking on a treadmill depends on your determination and training intensity. Experts recommend starting with 20-min walking sessions three times a week. After that, slowly increase the duration and frequency of your workout to 30-min walking sessions per day.
The intensity level of your treadmill walking routine plays a crucial role in determining the number of calories you burn per hour. According to a chart created by Harvard Health Publishing, a 185-pound person walking at 3.5 mph for 30 min burns around 178 calories. The same individual burns up to 200 calories simultaneously by raising the speed to 4.5mph.
Interestingly, this doesn't even consider the muscle gained by walking on the treadmill. These muscles will help to reduce thigh size since muscle tissues burn 4 times as many calories as body fat. You can essentially tone and burn leg fat within 1 or 2 months by brisk walking every day for 1-hour sessions.
2. Leg Fat Exercises
Incorporating muscle strengthening exercises in your training routine helps you lose fat to ensure your legs are toned. These workouts also boost muscular endurance and build strength. Besides, these exercises engage various leg muscles and other muscles of your inner thighs. All in all, these techniques will trigger the fat-burning process help you to reduce thigh fat over time.
The American College of Sports Medicine claims that adults should perform 8-10 multi-joint workouts 2 to 3 times per week. These thigh fat removal exercises impact several muscles simultaneously, thus burning more calories.
Best of all, some of these workouts do not need special equipment. You can efficiently perform them any time, anywhere. These exercises are suitable for those who wish to learn how to reduce thigh fat at home.
They include:
⦿ Squats & lunges
Squats & lunges are some of the best exercises for shaping and defining leg muscles. Thanks to their ability to engage your lower body. This gives you stronger, leaner thighs, toned butt, and sexy legs.
How will squats reduce thigh fat?
Experts claim that your fitness routine should include squats to decrease thigh size. This is because squats are a compound workout. As a result, they're suitable for engaging all muscles in your thighs, including hip adductors, abductors, quadriceps, and hamstrings. More importantly, squats help these muscles work harder, hence making your thighs look slimmer and toned.
In addition, squatting burns a significant amount of calories, helping you lose weight. At the same time, it can help you eliminate unwanted cellulite. What's more? Squats create some on the internal organs of your lower body, thus improving digestion and ensuring smoother bowel movements. Besides, they engage your back muscles and abs, which helps to strengthen core muscles.
Lastly, you can perform enhanced squats to make your leg fat exercises more effective. This involves adding weights or holding dumbbells at shoulder level while squatting. However, make sure you consult a trainer first before you start doing any enhanced exercise to reduce thighs.
⦿ Weight training
Weight training involves working against resistance to develop muscular endurance and build strength. This may include using dumbbells/ resistance bands to perform exercises like barbell squats and standing/ seated leg curls in the gym or at home.
Whichever the case, weight training, especially for the lower body, produces better-defined leg muscles and sculpted thighs. Moreover, it can help you reduce body fat and develop lean body mass.
⦿ HIIT Workout
Engaging in High-Intensity Interval Training leads to a reduction in body fat than other types of physical exercises. In essence, HIIT involves short bursts of intense activities like jumping or running, followed by low-intensity movements or short recovery periods. Moreover, HIIT workouts boost the metabolic rate & oxygen requirements, ensuring the body burns calories, even after the training.
Check out this article to Learn, How To Do HIIT On The Treadmill.
3. Dietary changes
Taking in too many calories leads to excess fat later stored in many parts of the body. Therefore, reducing the number of calories you take every day is an excellent step if you want to lose thigh fat.
In essence, 3500 calories are equivalent to 1 pound (lbs) of body fat. So, if you cut out about 500 calories per day, you can lose 1-2 pounds of body fat each week. Besides, as with other weight loss programs, combining exercise and diet will help you lose inner thigh fat.
That said, eating foods that burn thigh fat fast is just as important as doing the exercises we've listed above.
However, no specific diet is considered the best for decreasing thigh size. Instead, one generally loses weight by eating healthy foods with fewer calories and burning more calories than they consume. More importantly, it's good to understand what foods cause thigh fat so that you can avoid them.
According to the NIH (National Institute of Health), foods that burn thigh fat include:
- Eating vegetables & fruits
- Whole grains like whole-wheat bread & brown rice
- Healthful oils like nut oils and olive oil
- Protein from different sources including seeds, eggs, lean meats, beans, and nuts
Other dietary changes that will help you decrease thigh size include:
⦿ Avoid sugary foods and refined carbohydrates
Sugary foods and refined carbohydrates tend to harm our health. For instance, they cause your blood sugar levels to increase and crash soon after. These diets are usually followed by cravings and hunger for more junk and unhealthy foods. Besides, they don't contain the essential nutrients that promote weight loss. That said, if you're trying to decrease your thigh size, make sure you avoid these foods in your diet.
⦿ Drink lots of water
Our bodies are made up of about 75% water. Therefore, every function requires water in one or another. More importantly, this indicates that staying hydrated is vital to keep the body functioning smoothly. Slight dehydration may slow down your metabolic rate, affecting the weight loss process. Nutritionists advise that one should drink around eight glasses of water daily. However, you can change this amount depending on your activity level, height and weight.
⦿ Load up on fiber
High-fiber foods will also help you decrease thigh size. That's because they keep you feeling full for longer since the body takes longer to digest them. Moreover, they have essential minerals and vitamins but fewer calories.
Conclusion
Performing a walking workout to slim thighs comes with 2 main benefits. First, it acts as a lower-body toning workout that strengthens the troubled zone. Secondly, it burns a considerable number of calories, helping you lose weight in the process.
As mentioned earlier, no specific exercise will help you decrease thigh size. Instead, it would help if you combined walking with activities that involve the legs like deadlifts, lunges, and squats. These workouts work your leg muscles, including the inner thighs, to ensure your legs are toners. Also, adding dietary changes to your fitness routine will help you gain power, lose fat, and enhance overall fitness!
FAQs
1. Does running burn leg fat?
Yes. Running is an excellent exercise for reducing leg fat since it burns calories. More importantly, it works different muscle groups in the body, particularly the buttocks, thighs, and abs. This will tone your but and leg muscles, giving your buttocks & thighs a more defined shape.
2. Can I tone my legs by walking 30 minutes a day?
Adding 30 min of brisk walking to your daily fitness program can help you burn around 150 more calories daily. At the same time, it tones your calves, buttocks, and thighs. Moreover, it will strengthen your back and tummy core muscles, giving you firmer glutes and a flatter stomach.
3. Is walking or cycling better for toning legs?
Both cycling and walking are aerobic exercises that provide cardio workouts while engaging the leg muscles. Therefore, they're both ideal for strengthening & toning leg muscles.
4. Will walking up & down the stairs tone my legs?
Climbing up and down the stairs is one of the best physical exercises for toning and strengthening your lower body. This is because it targets all the trouble spots, including the hips, thighs, butt, and abs. In addition, it will improve your cardiovascular and lung health.