“Fat acceptance” does not undo the fact that fat thighs are harmful to your health — as research now shows.
But you can get rid of the excess fat in your upper legs.
Get Rid of Harmful Fat Thighs
Being self-conscious about your “fat thighs” can actually pay off, because this study strongly links excess thigh fat to health problems later in life.
Researchers at Wake Forest Baptiste Medical Center report that rising levels of fat in the thighs predict mobility loss, even if the individual is otherwise healthy.
Kristen Beavers, PhD and lead study author, reminds us that slower walking speed in older people is a predictor of death as well as disability and nursing home admission.
If you have enough fat in your thighs, this will slow walking speed.
The time to do something about your slow walking isn’t when you turn 65 or qualify for Medicare. The younger you lose the fat in your thighs, the better.
Top 8 Leg Exercises for Losing Thigh Fat
- Squat
- Deadlift
- Leg press
- Weighted walking lunge
- High intensity interval training
- Plyometrics (jumping routines)
Here is the barbell deadlift.
When you lose thigh fat, it will be easier to increase walking speed.
Beaver points out that the aging process promotes increased fat storage in the thighs: not just around thigh muscles but within these muscles. Fat within the muscles is called intramuscular.
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Certainly you’ve seen a cut of steak that was “marbled” with white goopy stuff all throughout? That’s intramuscular fat, and when it’s in your legs, it’s bad news.
Beavers’ study appears in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition(2013; online edition as of February 2013).
The paper states that higher levels of thigh fat, along with lower levels of muscle in this area, are a significant and independent predictor of a decline in walking speed.
Subjects who gained the most thigh fat over the four-year study period, and who lost the most muscle in the upper leg, experienced greatest risk of declining walking speed.
Being skinny or “medium” in build, however, does not, in and of itself, protect against slow walking speed, disability or disease.
This is why you’ll see plenty of non-overweight senior citizens struggling with walking.
If you have a “thin” upper body but “fat” thighs, you CAN change what seems to be your natural body type. Do it for health reasons.
You will not be able to shed the excess fat in your legs by doing treadmill workouts in which you’re holding onto the machine.
This kind of “exercise” will get you nowhere–what I call walking your way to zero results.
The best way to get rid of the extra fat in your thighs (and anywhere else in yoru body) is to train HARD, and to focus on big movements–the ones mentioned previously in this article — such as the squat and deadlift, pictured below.
Shutterstock/Stas Tolstnev
Shutterstock/kozirsky
Other big movements that will cause fat loss throughout your entire body and of course those thunder thighs are the bench press, kettlebell swing and lat pull-down.
