Trouble losing weight?
Q:
I'm having trouble losing weight. I have been eating well and exercising but my thighs don't seem to be any slimmer.
A:
It's great to hear you're eating sensibly and doing exercise rather than starving yourself on some crazy lettuce diet! However, try as you might, you won't lose weight specifically in one area, such as your thighs.
If you keep up what you're doing now (making sure that you expend more energy than you intake) you should steadily lose weight (aim to lose no more than 1kg a week). However, the weight won't directly come off from your thighs, no matter how much you will it to!
Your body shape will generally stay the same when you're losing weight, so if you're a pear shape now you'll end up a slimmer pear shape, and so on. Another fallacy is that only exercising the body parts you want to lose weight from, such as your abdominal muscles, will make that body part slimmer.
While you may have specific areas you'd like to target, your body will best benefit from general cardiovascular exercise to burn fat and a weight programme that works out your whole body. Doing resistance work a minimum of two times a week will increase your muscles, which burn more kilojoules that fatty tissue - even while at rest.
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