Best Way To Lose Weight On Inner Thighs

Medically reviewed by Daniel Bubnis, M.S., NASM-CPT, NASE Level II-CSS, Fitness — By Tamera Clifton, CPT — Updated on April 18, 2023

Losing fat typically involves a sustainable, nutritious eating plan along with regular exercise. You can strengthen the muscles in your legs with strength training and cardio exercises.

The inner thigh area can be a serious anxiety trigger for many people. It’s an area that tends to lend itself to fat storage and is up there with the lower belly and upper arms for its inclusion in the question trainers often receive: “How can I get rid of this?”

To Get An Inner Thigh Gap → Lose Inner Thigh Fat Fast By,

I totally relate to this and still feel the sting of my eighth-grade friend who likened my thighs to the shape of a grand piano because of that little curve of adipose up at the top.

I grew up in the age of the Thighmaster and “toning exercises” cut out of my mother’s women’s magazines, and I put in the hours trying to shrink away that jiggly little piece of myself.

In college, while working as a personal trainer and taking many anatomy and training classes in pursuit of my exercise science degree, I learned that strengthening the inner thighs won’t actually burn the fat there.

Top 10 Exercises For Slim, Tight & Sculpted Inner Thighs

At best, with inner thigh exercises you will build stronger muscles under the fat, and if you are really seeing muscle hypertrophy (muscle growth), you may increase the size of your thighs in the process.

The longer answer is that you can reduce your body fat with exercise and diet, but you’ll lose that fat from all over your body. You can’t spot reduce areas of your body with exercise.

Don’t give up hope, though. An increase in muscle and a little reduction of body fat can make your legs more shapely within the confines of your genetic potential. I’ll include some exercises to help you with both of these goals.

How To Reduce Thigh Fat

While weight loss is not always as simple as fewer calories in than calories out, there is some wisdom to that approach.

Burning more calories through exercise than you take in creates an energy imbalance, meaning you therefore need to tap into your energy stores (fat) to meet the calorie demands on your body (

This is a delicate balance, because too much of a calorie deficit can actually work against your metabolism, slowing it in response to way-too-low calorie intake. To keep your metabolism healthy, be mindful not to create a deficit of more than 500–1, 000 calories per day (

How To Lose Inner Thigh Fat (plus What Not To Do)

Diet is only part of it, however. You can definitely rev up your metabolism and burn fat with exercise. You can burn fat pretty efficiently with certain types of workouts.

HIIT, or high intensity interval training, is one of the most effective tools for building strength, blasting fat, and revving up your metabolism. It not only burns abundant calories, but it actually influences your overall metabolism by positively altering your insulin response (

HIIT allows for a certain level of variability but ultimately consists of alternating bits of high, often explosive, intensity with bouts of recovery-intensity exercise.

How To Lose Inner Thigh Fat

To get the real metabolic benefits of HIIT, the high intensity intervals (which can last from 30 seconds to several minutes) need to be performed at 85–95% of your maximum effort.

The benefits of HIIT are many, and the greatest benefit may be the enhanced metabolism it offers. If you legitimately push yourself during HIIT workouts at 90–95% intensity, you’ll keep burning fat and calories at a higher rate for at least 24 hours (

Another advantage of HIIT workouts is the variety they offer. You can alternate bodyweight exercises like burpees and pushups with aerobic recovery intervals or use resistance-based exercises, such as weighted lunges and kettlebell swings, for your work interval.

Trainers Explain 10 Ways To Melt Away Inner Thigh Fat

You could even do an all-cardio HIIT workout, although if your goal is to change your body composition and create a leaner thigh, you are probably best off doing weighted strength exercises as the high intensity part of your workout.

One consideration with HIIT is that because of its intensity, you’ll need to mix in other types of workouts. The intensity of HIIT is high enough to warrant adequate recovery, and if you’re trying to change your body composition, it’s important to keep active on your days off.

For most people, 2–3 days per week of high intensity is plenty. It’s important to mix in some cardio days and other forms of recovery, such as yoga and other gentle movement, to keep your body strong, recovered, and ready for the next big push.

The Ultimate Inner Thigh Workout: 5 Of The Best Inner Thigh Exercises

Yes, you read that right. Many people underestimate the impact strength training has on body fat, because the calorie burn elicited from a single training session is so much lower than what you burn when doing HIIT or cardio exercise (7).

And while your calorie deficit might not increase by a huge amount, recent research on mice suggests that weight training sets off a hormonal reaction in the body that stimulates fat cells to break down in a process called cellular crosstalk (9,

Why? Well, other studies in mice have found that fatty acids released into the bloodstream after fats break down may actually help with tissue repair (

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The research is new, so more studies need to be done. Still, all that to say: If fat loss is your goal, strength training can only help that process along (13).

Don’t forget good old cardio for fat burning. By combining it with a strength-based interval training plan and at least one day per week of recovery, you can keep your metabolic fires burning with a couple of good cardiovascular workouts during the week.

You can mix and match your modality (running, biking, or swimming, for example) and the type of cardio workout you do to keep your body and mind interested and responsive.

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Long, slow distance, or LSD, is an easy workout to get into if you have a bit of time to dedicate to the task. It’s a cardio workout done at a lower intensity for a longer duration.

For instance, a slightly longer swim at a slower speed or even a long, gentle hike in the woods. Intensity is not a goal of this workout, just endurance.

You will burn primarily fat for energy in this type of workout, and while the ultimate calorie burn level is lower, it’s still fuel for the fire of your goal of getting leaner. An LSD workout is good for endurance and can be used as a recovery workout if the intensity is suitably low (

How To Lose Leg Fat: Exercises And Other Methods

While reducing fat through diet and exercise is your best bet for shaping your inner thighs, keeping the muscles strong will still give you that nice lean look. Here are some effective exercises to target this area.

You can do these faster as more of a power move with a strong cardio effect or go slower with emphasis on range of motion. Either way, you’ll strengthen your inner thighs along with your glutes and abdominals.

Social media sites often tout the benefits of “fascia blasting” for fat loss, the idea being that your fascia (broad bands of connective tissue throughout your body) contributes to the appearance of fat on your body.

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The “blasting” part of this equation involves buying a certain product and using it in an admittedly painful process of massaging areas of your body to reduce fat and the appearance of cellulite.

Unfortunately, there has been only one study of this method, and it was both funded and performed by the manufacturer of the product (15).

While fascia blasting may yet offer some benefits, the evidence does not suggest that it’s as effective as diet and exercise in sculpting shapely thighs.

What Is A Thigh Gap? Here's What You Need To Know

When it comes to reshaping our bodies, we are limited to a large degree by the genetic lot we draw at birth. Some of us are just not meant to have thigh gap, but that doesn’t mean we can’t change anything about our shape.

By sculpting our muscles with strength training and keeping lean with HIIT and cardio, we can have beautifully strong legs of many shapes and sizes.Leg fat can be stubborn. Sadly, it’s a growing problem as you get older. This is because when you reach a certain age, and you gain weight, new fat cells develop in your thighs and hips. Even gaining a few pounds can add new fat cells to your legs. Many people wonder how to lose their thigh fat.

Once you reach adulthood, you tend to gain fat in your legs, hips, and thighs whenever you gain weight. This is, in part, due to your genetics, but a fact of adulthood.  Sadly, you can’t spot-reduce in just one area of your body like your legs, so you need to reduce your all-over body fat with healthy eating and exercise. Over time, your body will burn fat all over your body, including your thighs.

Shrink Inner Thigh Fat Fast With These 2 Effective Workouts

Eliminating only 500 calories from your daily calorie intake helps you burn body fat, including on your thighs. First, figure out how many calories you’re eating to maintain your current weight. Then subtract 500 calories from that number, and you’ll get the number of calories you need to eat