Best Way to Lose Thigh Fat Without Exercise

/in /by

You might think that the best way to lose thigh fat is to exercise like crazy, especially with cardio and lower body training. But spot-reducing fat is a myth and won’t help you lose thigh fat or any other kind of fat. To burn fat, you have to know the basics of how your body works, and those basics just might surprise you. Discover not only how to reduce your thigh fat but how to get the best body of your life and keep it that way for good by changing your mindset and your set-point.

How is Changing Your Mindset the Best Way to Lose Thigh Fat?

In the SANE interview with Jennipher Walters of the Fit-Bottomed Girl, Jennipher talks about how she changed her life and many others. She realized that all of us, especially women, naturally come in different shapes and sizes. She explained her life-changing moment very concisely in this quote about changing your mindset:

“I met with a registered dietician who was into intuitive eating and she said something to me that was pretty life-changing. I think – obviously this message is for women – but I think it also kind of applies to guys in a little way. She said, ‘Wow! Can you imagine what all the women in the world would have done and would have accomplished if they weren’t obsessed with how many calories they ate, how many calories they burned at the gym?’”

After that moment, Jennipher realized that there’s more to burning fat, getting a fit bottom half and life in general than just counting calories and sweating it out at the gym. Learning how the body actually works and giving it what it needs to succeed became her primary focus. And you can learn that, too. Here’s what you need to know to change your mindset and start losing fat so you can be your best you.

The Best Way to Lose Thigh Fat is to Change Your Set-Point

Everyone’s body is different. But each one has a natural point that the body wants to maintain, a natural weight range that feels right. That point is called your set-point. The set-point doesn’t just strive to maintain your body weight, though. It also supervises your fat storage.

How the Set-Point Works

The set-point is kind of like a strong-willed child. It makes changes so that it gets its way. That’s why dieting and over-exercising only work for the short-term. When your body senses that things are changing, the set-point, wanting to get its way, slows down your metabolic rate. That way, your body can hang onto the fat and keep the status quo.

Why Dieting and Over-Exercising Doesn’t Work

That’s why cutting calories only works for a short amount of time. Then it stops helping you lose weight and fat. Your body senses that fewer calories are going to be available, so it goes into starvation mode and clings to every calorie it gets, storing it as fat for later. Your body does the same thing with exercise. When you start to exercise more and more, the body adapts so that it stretches out the fat reserves to meet the new demands without losing any. The set-point stays happy because the body stays within the same range that it’s used to.

When it comes to burning fat, the set-point may seem like a losing battle. But the good news is that you can change your set-point. Just because body fat is controlled by your set-point doesn’t mean that you have to hang onto that fat forever. Your set-point is controlled by hormones, and there are things you can do to influence those hormones and change the set-point. These things don’t require heavy exercise or dieting. All that’s required is the right information about food and giving your body the food it needs without going into starvation mode. Here’s how that works.

How Hormones Factor In

Two of the major hormones that affect your body’s set-point are leptin and ghrelin. Leptin has been coined the “starvation” hormone because it plummets when you restrict your calorie intake or starve yourself. Produced in fat cells, leptin signals when the body has had enough to eat, or is full, so it plays a big role in your satiety. When leptin levels decrease, your brain tells your body that it needs more food than it really does.

Ghrelin, on the other hand, increases your appetite and makes you feel hungry. When you starve yourself, your ghrelin levels rise. In concert with the decrease in leptin levels, this further confirms with your brain that your body isn’t full and tells you on a hormonal level that you need to eat more food and calories. Ghrelin is made in the stomach, so it’s directly affected by the foods you eat.

Several factors influence the rise and fall of these two hormones:

  • How much you eat
  • When you eat
  • Your sleep cycles
  • How much light you take in
  • How much you exercise
  • The amount of stress in your life

While you can try to control most of these factors, influencing your hormonal balance with what you eat is one of the simplest ways to change your set-point quickly. This is because hormones are largely controlled by calorie quality. By feeding your body nutrient-dense foods, you avoid starvation mode. You change your hormones so they can change you.

The Best Way to Lose Thigh Fat (and All Fat) is Through Calorie Quality

The quality of calories is controlled by four factors: satiety, aggression, nutrition and efficiency. These four factors work together to make the needed changes in your body so your set-point can change.

  • Satiety: How quickly your calories fill you up and make you feel satisfied
  • Aggression: How likely the calories you eat are to be stored as fat in your body
  • Nutrition: how many vitamins, minerals, essential amino acids, essential fatty acids and other nutrients your calories provide
  • Efficiency: How easily those calories are converted into body fat

These four factors make up the basis of the SANE solution. They are the best way to lose thigh fat and all of your extra body fat. Understanding how water, fiber and protein affect those four factors, hormones and thus your body’s set-point is crucial to seeing how the four factors work.

The Role Water Plays

People are comprised of at least 60 percent water. Staying hydrated keeps your body healthy and avoids a multitude of problems, including fatigue, lethargy, temperature regulation and a decrease in brain function. Even a 2 percent reduction in water volume of your body can dehydrate you and start to cause serious problems. Drinking six to eight 8-ounce glasses of water every day helps you maintain proper kidney function and helps you avoid constipation, keeping your digestive system moving smoothly so your body can keep burning fat throughout the day and night.

But what’s more, staying hydrated maximizes how well your brain functions, increases your energy levels and is one of the best ways to lose thigh fat. Water works as a transport system through your digestive track and gets the food where it needs to go. It also works with enzymes, stomach acids and hormones to break down and deliver nutrients so they can do their jobs more efficiently. In one study, people who drank half a liter of water showed increased metabolism and fat-burning of 30 percent for a full hour and a half after drinking the water.

As your body ages, you need water even more to help you ward off hormone resistance. As your body tries harder to maintain its set-point and hang onto the status quo, water can help you avoid the downfalls of a slowing metabolism. While water helps people of all ages keep the fat-burning process going, it’s especially important as you get older. One study showed that middle-aged and older adults who consume half a liter of water 30 minutes prior to every meal lost 44 percent more weight than those who didn’t.

How to Get Enough Water

That’s a huge difference but drinking that much water might seem overwhelming. In the SANE eating plan, you’ll get a lot of your water from the foods you eat. By increasing the amounts of non-starchy vegetables, nutrient-dense protein, whole food fats and low-fructose fruits you’ll automatically get more water and be able to get the most benefits from the food you eat. You’ll feel satisfied and full quicker. Your body will be able to use the nutrients better. And you’ll keep burning fat longer, all because of the higher water content.

How Fiber Fits In

Fiber has kind of gotten a bad reputation over the years. Fiber is often referred to as “roughage” and thought of as a necessary evil that adds bulk to your stool. But that type of fiber, insoluble fiber, is only one of the two types of fiber in food. They are both important in finding the best way to lose thigh fat and all of your unnecessary fat. But knowing the difference between the two can help you burn even more fat.

The other type of fiber, soluble fiber, is the softer, gentler fiber in your food. If you’ve ever grown a Chia pet, you’ve seen what soluble fiber looks like. The sticky gel that forms around chia seeds when they get wet is exactly the same type of action that occurs in all soluble fiber. It binds to other substances, forming a gel-like substance in your gut.

This action lowers your cholesterol and helps regulate your blood sugar levels because it increases levels of good bacteria in your stomach. It also works to decrease inflammation and improves your immune system so you can ward off symptoms of your set-point trying to maintain itself, like headaches and hunger pangs. Studies have shown that increasing your soluble fiber intake doesn’t just help you lose thigh fat, but also burns potentially deadly visceral fat by 3.7 percent.

How to Get Enough Fiber

All of the foods in the SANE solution are naturally higher in soluble fiber and can help you lose thigh fat. You’ll have lots of choices from all of the food groups. Some of the best examples are:

  • Brussels sprouts, mixed greens, asparagus and broccoli from the non-starchy vegetables group
  • Peas from the nutrient-dense protein category
  • Chia seeds, flax seeds, cocoa and avocado from the whole-food fats group
  • Goji berry, raspberries and blueberries from low-fructose fruits

What Protein Brings

Nutrient-dense protein is one of the best ways to control your satiety and burn thigh fat and other fat. Eating high amounts, around 30-40 percent of your daily intake, of nutrient-dense protein reduces your body fat naturally.

Protein contains hormones that help you control your cravings and keep you feeling full. Ghrelin is one of these hormones. Studies have shown that getting the right amounts of ghrelin can regulate your appetite and keep you burning fat longer during the 24 hours after you eat it. PYY, the “fullness” hormone, is also released when you eat protein. This hormone decreases your appetite and works with the others to increase your satiety faster. This prevents you from overeating, helps you reduce that set-point and gets to your best body quicker.

When protein is used in the right way by your body, it provides these beneficial hormones. It translates into the calories you eat being used more efficiently. This also means foods are less likely to be stored as unnecessary fat. They can be used as they are meant to be used. Your body will be working more efficiently, burning fat instead of storing it.

How to Get Enough Protein

The SANE solution offers great choices for nutrient-dense proteins. Some of the foods you’ll get to enjoy include:

  • Sea bass and salmon
  • Eggs and cottage cheese
  • Shrimp
  • Snapper
  • Squid
  • Chicken
  • Grass-fed beef and lamb

How it All Fits Together for the Best Way to Lose Thigh Fat and More

By decreasing your set-point, you automatically burn fat everywhere in your body. This includes that hard to get rid of thigh fat. Using the SANE solution of satiety, aggression, nutrition and efficiency, you’ll be choosing foods that will naturally reset your set-point and keep you losing fat even without dieting or a change in exercise. You’ll have more energy, be better hormonally-balanced and enjoy your life and body again, all with just a simple change of mindset. If you want to not just imagine but start accomplishing all the changes you can make in yourself and the world, today. What are you waiting for?