How can I get thinner legs? Understand these 3 things first

The summer heat is unbearable, and even the fabric of clothes feels like it will burn your skin. But if you wear a vest and shorts, you are worried about your thick thighs that are too thick to show to others... In fact, it’s not that you can’t lose weight, maybe you are just using the wrong method! Let us follow the information provided by the well-known foreign fitness website "superskinnyme" to break the long-standing misconception about leg slimming and create the most popular "honey thighs"!

Is it hard to lose weight in legs? Sorry, it's in your genes.

Why is it that the girl next door runs and weight trains with you every day and eats the same thing as you, but her legs are two inches thinner than yours, while your thighs remain as strong as a rock? Don’t accuse Xiaohua of secretly going for liposuction. In fact, the answer was decided at the moment of birth! Yes, "DNA" determines who you are and also determines your body proportions, just like your height. These are established facts that cannot be changed. Many women have the so-called "pear-shaped body", which means that the lower body is relatively stable and the pelvis is relatively wide. Usually, the legs are not very thin.

In addition, "gender" is also one of the factors that make women's legs naturally thicker than men's. Women's estrogen secretion is mainly stored in the pelvis, inner and outer thighs and buttocks, while men's testosterone tends to accumulate in the waist and abdomen, which is the location of "stubborn fat". Therefore, women are naturally more likely to have thicker thighs than men!

Before slimming down your legs, you must ask yourself 3 questions

Q1. Do I understand my basic body information?

This may sound like nonsense, but it is a question that everyone must figure out before making up their mind to start losing weight. Height and weight are reference values, not the key point of whether you can lose weight or not. The question here is: Please answer within three seconds what is your basal metabolic rate and body fat percentage? If you don't even know what your basal metabolic rate is, then this will be the first step to help you lose weight correctly, not just lose weight in your legs. Basal metabolic rate refers to the minimum amount of calories required by the human body when it is completely still. You can find out your basal metabolic rate through the following formula.

【Mifflin-St Jeor formula】：

Resting Metabolic Rate: RMR

Male RMR: 10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) - 5 x age + 5

Female RMR: 10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) - 5 x age – 161

Estimating basic daily calorie needs:

1. Sedentary (no exercise or irregular exercise): RMR x 1.2

2. Light activity (exercise 1-3 days per week): RMR x 1.375

3. Moderate activity (moderate exercise 6-7 days per week): RMR x 1.55

4. Highly active (6-7 days of vigorous exercise per week): RMR x 1.725

Next, ask yourself, what is your body fat percentage? Excessive body fat is a common health problem faced by modern people, especially those who like to eat sweets, drink sugary drinks for afternoon tea, or eat out for irregular meals. Fat is indeed an essential nutrient for the human body, but the problem is that most people consume too much invisible fat without realizing it.

According to the ideal body fat percentage published by the Obesity Research Society of the Republic of China:

Under 30 years old: 25% or more of women and 20% or more of men are obese

Over 30 years old: Women ≥ 30%, men ≥ 25% are obese

Find a professional nutritionist or hospital to measure your body fat percentage. If it is over the standard, you need to make reducing body fat your primary goal for weight loss.

Q2. Are my legs muscular or fat?

From the bones outwards, first there are muscles, then fat, and the outermost layer is the skin. So, no matter how big your muscles are, if you don’t reduce body fat, your thighs will still look thick. This is why when you want to slim down your legs, coaches or experts will mention "gaining muscle and reducing fat." How can you easily judge whether your legs are thicker due to fat accumulation or well-developed muscles?

Step 1. Sit down and stretch your legs forward

Step 2. Tighten your thighs

Step 3. Pinch the flesh above the thigh

Step 4. Press the thigh meat and observe the skin's rebound speed

★ I easily pinched a piece of meat → more fat

★ I can't pinch it hard, I can only pinch the skin → more muscular type

★ After pressing my skin, it took a few seconds to recover → my body became swollen

Q3. Have I reviewed my eating habits?

People need to eat three meals a day, but the time for exercise is not necessarily the same as the three meals. Many people wonder: "I have been exercising like crazy every day, why is my figure still the same?" Exercise is important, yes, but to successfully reduce the body fat mentioned above, it depends not only on exercise to burn fat, but more importantly, what do you eat?

Try keeping track of what you eat throughout the day. Try to record it in detail for a week. For example, if you have a pork ribs bento, don’t just write about the pork ribs and rice. Instead, record one serving of fried pork ribs, a bowl of rice, and then what the three individual dishes are. Calories are not necessarily the point. The point is that you should be able to feel whether these foods have a positive or negative impact on your body.

Fried spareribs, you can tell they are very oily without calculating the calories, and your skin becomes oily easily, but after eating cereal, you find that your bowel movements are smoother and the acne on your face has decreased; after drinking a cup of Coke, you feel bloated but not really full, but after drinking water instead, you find that you are less likely to have a dry mouth and no longer feel like craving for snacks. That's the purpose of reviewing your eating habits, to understand what your body needs.

Fatty thighs: aerobic exercise to slim down the whole body

If your thighs are where you accumulate more fat, a body fat percentage of 80% is above the standard range, so you should rely on aerobic exercise to achieve the goal of whole-body fat reduction! In addition to the most well-known jogging, brisk walking, swimming, cycling, etc. are also aerobic exercises that can increase your heart rate.

Perhaps you have heard that eating starch will make your lower body fat, and eating sweets will make your thighs fat. From the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, "dampness tends to be deposited downwards", and people with heavy dampness are more likely to suffer from obesity in the lower body. Addiction to sweets and ice cream is one of the reasons for heavy dampness in the body. However, going back to what was mentioned earlier, "which part loses weight first is determined by genes", and which part gains weight first is of course also determined by genes.

So instead of refusing to eat starch, it is better to think from another perspective. Choose high-quality starch with high nutritional value, and choose natural foods in their original form with less processing, such as pumpkin, sweet potato, taro, potato, yam, brown rice, five-grain rice or ten-grain rice to replace processed refined starches such as white rice, noodles, cakes, biscuits or pastries.

Muscular thighs: Change your movement pattern

Unless you are an athlete who engages in explosive and intense sports, few people have thick thighs that are 100% muscular. Therefore, it is speculated that most people of this type may have a mixture of fat and muscle: well-developed muscles and high fat.

If you have a habit of exercising, you may want to consider changing your exercise mode, perhaps reducing lower body strength training exercises such as squats, and instead focusing on aerobic exercise, especially long-term aerobic exercise, such as marathons. In addition, stretching after exercise is also a way to stretch and relax muscles.

However, we have to speak up for the muscles. Muscles are much more useful than fat. They increase the basal metabolic rate, allowing you to lose weight even while lying down, and can make your body look firm and toned. How many people would love to have this! Don’t ever think that having short legs is healthy; having muscular thighs makes you look sexier!

Is it useful to apply, pinch and hit the thighs?

"Sitting or standing for long periods of time, loving to eat sweets and drink iced drinks, and rarely drinking water" How many of the above do you have? Modern people can hardly escape the above options, so edema has become a problem for many people. Massage can help promote blood circulation in the lower limbs and eliminate edema, but if you want to truly eliminate calf fat, you still have to rely on voluntary exercise. Just sitting on a chair and tapping your thighs, the fat will not leave you!