De-flab Your Inner Thighs

Q. My inner thighs are too flabby. What exercises can I do to firm them up?

A. Muscles can look and feel flabby if they are weak or if there is extra fat surrounding them, or both.

So your inner-thigh toning strategy should be two pronged: Do resistance exercise to strengthen the adductor muscles in the inner thighs and decrease body fat.

Doing more cardio exercise and eating fewer calories each day can help you can reduce body fat all over your body, including your thighs.

Tone up inner-thigh muscles

Firming up these muscles is easy. All you need to do are the following exercises on MSN Health & Fitness’ Fit Zone on two to three non-consecutive days per week. Try these four moves:

• Wide squat
• Inner thigh bridge
• Inner thigh raise
• Side lunge with press

Lose the fat

Keep in mind that these inner-thigh moves will strengthen the muscles, making them feel firm and look toned. But these exercises will not burn off fat from the area. Some exercise techniques incorrectly imply that you can spot reduce certain areas of the body by doing targeted exercises. But don’t be fooled: The muscle burn you may feel by the end of a set of repetitions of an exercise is not an indication that you are burning fat, but simply a sign of muscle fatigue. Even if you performed a thousand inner-thigh leg lifts every day for a month, you won’t burn any measurable amount of fat. You’d build muscle endurance, but that spot toning approach won’t downsize your thighs.

Reducing thigh fat is more problematic than losing upper-body fat. That’s because lower-body fat is more fat-loss resistant than fat in the upper body, such as the abs. The only way to reduce body fat is to metabolize it—or use it for energy—either by doing high calorie burning exercise or by eating fewer calories each day. Depending on how much fat you have to start with as well as your genetic tendencies of fat distribution, you may luck out and find that starting a regular routine of cardio such as walking, running or cycling on most days of the week will reduce thigh fat after a few months. Or you may discover that more exercise, or exercising at a higher intensity, is needed. The longer you stick to it, the better your results will be. Dieting sensibly can also reduce fat all over your body.

Be patient with fat loss, as it takes time. The good news is that you are burning some fat with every single cardio workout while getting fitter and healthier to boot. Walking, running, swimming or any other cardio workout will reduce more fat than a muscle strengthening move. But doing both together will reap the best results.

Find all articles by Martica.

Do you have a fitness or weight-loss question for Martica? Send e-mail to experts@microsoft.com. Please include Ask Martica in the subject line. Each of our experts responds to one question each week and the responses are posted on Mondays on MSN Health. We regret that we cannot provide a personalized response to every submission.

Martica Heaner, Ph.D., M.A., M.Ed., is a Manhattan-based exercise physiologist and nutritionist, and an award-winning fitness instructor and health writer. She has a Ph.D. in behavioral nutrition and physical activity from Columbia University, and is also a NASM-certified personal trainer. She has written hundreds of articles for publications such as Self , Health , Prevention , The New York Times and others. Martica is the author of eight books, including her latest, Cross-Training for Dummies. (Read her full bio.)

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