How to slim down your hips? This is quite a large concern for a lot of women, so in this article, we’ll look at what causes excess weight on your hips and how to get them slim.
As we’ll explain, the core issue for most women is due to excess body fat levels.
To get your hips slimmer, you need to focus on weight loss, which is about making an energy deficit. As you make an energy deficit, your body will pull from its energy stores and your hips will begin to get slimmer.
You cannot do toning workouts or the like to get slim hips. This is because you cannot spot train body fat.
It’s essential (and gets you a lot better results) to focus on weight loss and getting to your ideal weight.
In this article, we’ll look at what causes hip fat and what steps you need to take to get slimmer hips.
What Causes Slim Hips
Before we look at how to slim down your hips, let’s first start by looking at what’s causing this. Really understanding this can save you a lot of time and get you a lot better results.
There is three core parts to being slim and toned. They are:
- Your body fat levels
- Your muscle tone
- How firmly your muscles are held
The first one is the most important here, which is your body fat levels.
We all have a certain body fat percentage, which at your ideal weight for most women will be between 19 – 24%.
Within this range, this is typically where your hips will be slim.
Above this, this is where your body begins to store excess weight throughout. Naturally, this will go to our legs and stomach, but also throughout in general including on our hips.
Secondly, is your muscle tone, however this is underneath your body fat levels. Therefore, yes, you can have great muscle tone, but not have slim legs, stomach or in this case hips.
This is very much because your muscle tone is separate from your body fat levels.
Finally, a little more advanced is how firmly your muscles are held in a relaxed state.
Your core issue with excess weight on the hips is really due to excess body fat levels. The solution here is to focus on weight loss, which is very closely related to your body fat percentage.
As you get to your ideal weight, your hips will begin to get slimmer for you.
Workouts alone will not get you results. This is because you cannot spot train body fat. Not only do we know this is the case (that you can’t do sit-ups to get a slim stomach) lots of research has tested this and found it to be true (study, study, study).
What happens is, you may end up building muscle tone, but it’s underneath and you can’t see it.
Therefore, as is extremely common for a lot of women working out, you don’t have visible results.
This is why to get slim hips you need to focus on weight loss.
How To Get Slim Hips
As you can see above, to get slim hips, you need to focus specifically on weight loss. As you lose weight, your body fat percentage will reduce, and your hips will begin to get slimmer.
So, what causes and how do you lose weight?
To lose weight, you need to make what we call an energy deficit. This is the source of what causes weight loss (study).
How this works though is typically misunderstood.
Each day your body is burning energy, typically known as calories, which for most women will be between 1400 and 2000 each day.
When you eat below what your body is burning, your body will tap into its energy stores and you will lose weight.
It takes though a full 3500 calories to lose one pound.
This means that by making an energy deficit of 500 each day, that will be one pound lost over the week.
You want to specifically know your calories and focus on consistently reaching them. This, whilst more complex than it appears, is how you get to your ideal weight and slim hips over time.
To be clear, losing weight is challenging, it takes a lot of work and commitment, but is how you get the ideal shape.
It’s really not possible without this, because as covered above you cannot spot train body fat.
Do Workouts Get Hips Slimmer?
No.
You can see why above. Because you cannot spot train body fat.
What happens is, you may be building some muscle tone, but if you’re not lean enough, you’re unable to see it.
The workouts themselves may indeed build tone, but it will be underneath your body fat levels.
This is the reason planks or ab workouts do not get you a slim stomach or leg workouts do not get you slim legs. The same principle applies to your hips.
To get slim hips, you need to focus the energy deficit and getting to your ideal weight.
It is true that you can get some of what we call the recomposition effect, where your body providing, you’re maintaining or in an energy deficit, can build some muscle tone and swap for body fat.
However, this is quite small and is not enough to get you toned.
You get a lot better results to focus on weight loss first. You do not need to do workouts to get your hips slim, as you make an energy deficit and get to your ideal weight, they will automatically become slim for you.
How Long To See Results?
How long does it take to reduce hip fat? This depends on a lot of factors including where you started, what you’ve been doing and how committed you are.
Results are typically gradual. It really depends on how long it takes you to get to around 24% body fat, or what we call your ideal weight. At this level, you will have slim hips.
How To Slim Down Your Hips
To the question of how to slim down your hips, as you can see above, the truth is you cannot spot train body fat.
You need to focus on making an energy deficit. As you lose weight, your body will tap into its energy stores and your hips will begin to get slimmer.
This is not an overnight fix but is how you do it properly and will get you the best results.