What strength training do I need to do to lose fat in my stomach, love handles, and thighs?

Question

I've been researching questions on here and found to lose fat, but not so much weight (I'm 5'4'' and 122lbs) you need "strength training." What exactly do I need to do to lose fat in those areas? I don't have a gym membership so I would like some creative and enjoyable things to do at home.

If strength training is only for my stomach, what can I do for my love handles and thighs?

Answer 1

There is no site specific way of losing fat... the old myth about working your abs to burn belly fat isn't true. To get rid of love handles, you need to lose overall fat. That happens with exercise and watching your diet. More on that below.

The most effective way to lose fat is aerobic exercise in the "moderate" fat-burning range, ideally first thing in the morning before you eat. When you wake your body is ready to burn fat and your levels of growth hormone are highest at that time. Later in the day it can take up to 30 minutes just to put your body into a fat-burning mode.

Another overlooked way to burn fat is by lifting weights. Skeletal muscle has very high caloric needs... almost twice that of adipose (fat) tissue. Put on a little muscle and you will burn calories all day even at rest. Be aware that skeletal muscle weighs more, so with this approach you may see your weight increasing while your body fat is melting away. Not realizing this often stresses folks who think they should be losing weight as a measure of fitness. Forget the scale, look in the mirror and you will be happy.

For diet, keep a diary for a couple of weeks counting calories, grams of protein, and grams of fat intake. It is easy with online sources of nutritional information (type the name of the food and calories into the Google search engine) and packaging labels. That will let you quickly figure out where the fat is coming from in your diet.

Fat gives you 9 calories per gram. So take the number of grams of fat, multiply by 9, then calculate what percentage the fat calories are of your total daily calories. Restricting the calories from fat to about 20% of your total intake is ideal for a maintenance diet... that isn't overly restrictive. Of note, you need some fat in your diet. For instance, the body uses fat to produce hormones. Once you have a picture of how to modify your diet, you can drop the diary and just go back to it occasionally if you are wanting to tweek things further.

There is a subset of questions that goes further and asks about "How to get a six-pack?" The answer is the same. Six-packs are 20% abdominal exercise and 80% diet. There is one caveat... abdominal muscles will form in the position that you exercise them, so be certain to pull them tightly toward your spine while doing crunches, etc. Also, during most lifting, the "core is active" which means that you should be stabilizing with contracted abs then too. Fail to do this and the abs will form, but bulging outward and the result is not attractive.

If you are trying to build muscle as a way to lose fat, then you may need to increase total calories and specifically your protein intake. I target about 0.8 g of protein per pound of body weight each day when actively building. That is far more protein than most people need in their diets.


Aloha

Answer 2

well, as others have said, you need Cardio to burn the fat. Strength Training makes the muscles stronger. For thighs, you want things like lunges and squats. Not sure about the others though

Answer 3

I loved to play ball, and for the first time in my life, I'm actually useful, at a ballgame, instead of just a big stationary person, that maybe if the ball comes within this range, I might get it. I was wearing-I'd always wore XX kind of jersey. And then I went down to medium. And then the medium was too big, that it's coming down here. So I'm wearing a rockin' outfit, and I'm making a play, and the guy stops, beans it in the face 'cause he says, "Look at your body. You're rockin' hard." And that was the first time I had ever gotten a compliment like that in my whole life.

Answer 4

In order to burn fat you need to use more calories than you take in. Diet alone won't help because you will loose muscle too and that's what helps to burn the fat. You have to do some aerobic exercising such as running or cycling. It is never easy. Crunches and sit ups will help to tone the muscles in your stomach which will make you look slimmer also. Good luck.

Answer 5

to lose fat/weight/excess calories, you need to do two things:

1) eat better. minimize junk food, soda, anything artificial. stick to healthy staples like lean meats, egg whites, veggies, fruits, whole grains, low fat dairy, and nuts/olive oil. since these are lower in calories, you'll be able to eat a lot of these foods without feeling the effects of a ton of calories that'd normally come from bad foods.

2) exercise correctly, by that i mean do cardio a few days a week for your heart, but focus on strength training/weight lifting to build muscle (which will in turn burn calories all day long and even when you're asleep). do these 4 basic exercises with free weights and you'll maxmize the number of muscles worked in a short period of time: barbell squat, dumbbell bench chest press, dumbbell deadlifts, and pull-ups. they hit pretty much all of your body parts and utilize big compound movements instead of wasting your time on isolated movements like the over-rated bicep curl.

hope that helps!

Answer 6

The Firm exercise videos and fanny lifter do miracles for thighs, abs, and everything else.
The videos will kick your butt though and you will need to be faithful with them at least 4 times per week.
Trust me these are the only thing that ever worked for me
You can buy it at target by the way

Answer 7

Good question. I'm waiting for the answers as Y!A says the familiar "be the first to answer this question". But hopefully theres a good answer coming up cuz I want to know the same. Dont blow 10 points on B.A. from me, I'm just curious. (I know you wont anyway. :D)

Answer 8

no strength training gets rid of stomach fat only aerobic training and diet.

Answer 9

I hope you don't think this sounds gross but personally this has been working for me. try masturbating as you get into those are the muscles you use. i have lost a couple of inches and lbs and i can see some definition in my abs and thighs. Plus its really fun.