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eLearning Series:
Your Most Popular Exercise & Fitness Questions
Learn the right way to get into
shape...
( 50 articles
in this series )
Toning
Your Hips and Thighs
For the vast majority of women, shapeless
hips and thighs with excess fat are a major complaint. Thanks
to female physiology, women’s bodies are simply designed to
retain fat in the hip/thigh area to assist with childbearing
and be available for energy in case of famine. That was great
back in the caveman days but in modern times the typical woman
is not likely to need several months’ worth of fat stored on
her hips. Physiology is not likely to change any time soon,
though, so women have to combat fat on the hips and thighs
in a different way. Fortunately the area can be slimmed down
through a combination of diet, exercise and specifically targeted
toning movements so that your hips and thighs no longer resemble
that of a cavewoman.
Begin
by assessing your diet – do you eat a lot of junk food
or dine out frequently? Oftentimes a busy schedule can prevent
people from eating as healthy as they would like, especially
since it can difficult to get away from work for a real meal.
What about cravings? Women especially are prone to cravings
for high-fat, high-calorie foods that have no real nutritional
value. Premenstrual syndrome can be responsible for many of
those cravings but often emotional eating is a factor as well.
You should take an honest look at your diet and keep a food
diary for a few days. Write everything you eat and
how you felt at the time. That can provide insight into your choices
for nourishment. If you’re dealing with stressful situations
at home or work, that can reflect itself in your daily diet.
Make a commitment to yourself to change your eating habits
and take care of your body by providing yourself with healthy,
nutritious foods that give you the right kind of fuel to make
it through the day. Eating a properly balanced diet can actually
help to alleviate many symptoms of stress and may help you
deal with your situation more effectively. When you know how
to use it properly, food is a powerful tool.
As part of your program, you
should keep a food journal to track your eating and also
motivate yourself to eat better
every day. Knowing that you will have to write down two chocolate
bars including the amount of calories and fat can deter you
from eating them in the first place – one of the reasons that
food journals are so powerful. Being able to track your feelings
at the time you ate can help you identify emotional issues
and encourage you to eat because you want to, not because your
boss yelled at you. Consider also using your food journal to
keep track of your weight and measurements once a week to provide
yourself with an accurate record of your progress over the
weeks.
Consider
your exercise program – do you have one? You should!
When the hips and thighs are chubby and out of shape, that’s
typically a situation that will require a lot of fat-burning.
The issue is not so much that the muscles aren’t in shape but
that there’s too much fat over the muscles to show any real
definition. Fat-burning activities will be a vital part of
reshaping your lower body and you should plan to work out at
least four times every week for about thirty to forty-five
minutes each time. The good news is that you don’t
have to work out all at once – fit three 10-minute workouts
into your
day and you’ve done your exercise. Recent studies show that
short, intense spurts of exercise can be just as effective
as longer workouts. That’s good news for everyone with busy
days and busier nights. The best choices for fat-burning are
swimming, power-walking, and high-intensity aerobics. All three
of these options will blast calories from your body and help
torch the fat from your body. Burning the fat off is your first
priority in order to see the true shape of your body underneath.
In between your fat-blasting workouts, make time to strengthen
your hip and thigh area by doing squats and lunges as well
as lateral raises to tone the outer thighs. You may want to
wait to focus on the strengthening exercises until you have
lost fat from the hips and thighs, but fortunately this is
an area that builds muscle fairly quickly. Squats are an especially
powerful move to tone up the buttocks and increase the power
of your workouts.
Shaping
up the hips and thighs is by no means impossible. Make your plan, keep a daily food record, and burn fat through
cardiovascular exercise – your lower body will start to reshape
itself within a few weeks. There’s nothing better than looking
in the mirror and knowing that the strong, beautiful lower
body is thanks to your hard work and effort.
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SolveYourProblem.com : 2005
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