[By Carrie Hudson]
Are you hating the mini skirt revival and summer shorts that keeps riding higher season after season? Don’t you just cringe a little and go green with envy when some other-worldly woman sashay past you with pins that are perfectly toned and smooth, with just the right shade of tan?You’re not alone, girlfriend. Save for the very privileged, and annoying few, most women have hang ups about their legs and wish they could change them. But all is not lost if you’re determine to target those areas that get you down. Instead of scurrying past fashion trends you never once thought were meant for you, take on the challenge to embrace them with these 5 foolproof tips to tone up your thighs before summertime descends.
Launch into lunges
Many women hate their upper legs so much that they don’t even try to firm them, but according to personal trainer, Mandy Dubois, our major thigh muscles, the hamstrings and quadriceps as well as your butt, are actually not difficult to tone.
If you take your target training seriously, you’ll be duly rewarded pretty soon. For enhanced results, combine your lunges and squats with some form of aerobics exercise 3 times a week. Walking, biking and swimming are great options to give your upper legs more definition, and in-line skating is another particularly good activity that’s fun to engage in with your BFF or partner to give you great looking thighs.
Climb every mountain
To tone up your thighs, you basically have to get up and moving, and use your legs to do the talking. Mountain climbing is a super effective way to tone up those flabby, thunder thighs. But if there’s no suitable terrain anywhere in sight or the great outdoors is simply not your thing, taking to the stairs is an excellent alternative. Make a conscious effort to avoid the elevators in your urban jungle, climbing every flight of stairs to work your leg muscles at an given opportunity. As we work our way up flights of stairs, the hips and knees are repeatedly bent and extended, utilizing many muscle groups including your quadriceps, hamstrings and glutes. This is considered an effective form of resistance training, and by working in periodic runs at accelerated speed, a set of stairs can easily do double-duty as a bench or aerobic step for a total-body workout to transform you from flab to fab!
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Clean up your diet
Eating right is the cornerstone to looking trim and tone. Unfortunately, a woman’s hips and thighs are the most beloved places for fat build-up, and one of the last to get rid of with any fat loss regime, giving credence to the dieting adage, “Moment on the lips, lifetime on the hips”. “To speed up your fat burning process, replaced fatty and processed foods with high quality protein such as lean meat, skinless chicken breast and fish,” advises Dr. Chua Han Boon, senior medical consultant with the SW1 Clinic (helmed by the founders of The Sloane Clinic). “Consume grains and fruits either just before, or after your workouts to make sure the carbohydrates are used as an energy source rather than being stored as fat, which in women, tend to gravitate around the lower abdomen and thighs.”
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Sculpting to perfection
To put yourself on the fast track towards your beauty goal or when an extra boost is required to breakthrough that annoying plateau hit despite the best of your fitness and dietary efforts, try out scientifically proven body contouring and toning treatments favoured by A-listers to sculpt their celebs’ bodies to picture perfection sans photoshop.
To tackle stubborn pockets of fat enveloping your inner and outer thighs, Coolshape is your go to treatment if surgical liposuction is not on your agenda. Engaging the gold standard of fat-freezing by Zimmer behind Zeltig technology for ‘cryolipolysis’ and not just sone generic platform. To ensure faster visible results and a quicker recovery time, Dream Body Tone uses a vibro-massage core to stimulate optimal lymphatic drainage of surrounding tissues to speed up the clearance of broken down fat cells.It also harnesses the power of sonic waves to help infuse potent skin strengthening vitamins, amino acids and peptides that are essential for collagen regeneration and remodeling, improving overall skin tone and elasticity over area(s) treated.
To make the leap from Bali beach babe to Ipanema Brazilian goddess, raise your stakes and up the game with Exilis Body Magic. A novel, FDA approved treatment that engages a unique combination of ultrasound waves and radiofrequency (RF), it systematically heats up skin to various depths, resulting in both fat reduction and skin tightening,with circumferential reduction,cellulite smoothening and textural gains to boot. Visible results may be seen in as little as 2 to 3 sessions, and dreams of having a pair of pins of modelesque proportions may very well be a reality after 6 to 8 sessions done as part of the Supermodel Bodyfit Program conceptualised by the team of Weight Management experts from the SW1 Clinic .