Easy Ways For A Teenager To Lose Weight In Her Belly & Thighs

If there really was an easy way to lose weight in the belly and thighs, then belly and thigh fat wouldn't be an issue and you wouldn't be reading this article. However, theoretically, what you need to do to lose belly and thigh fat is pretty straight forward. The harder part is making it happen. Still, some strategies ease the belly- and thigh-burn process.

Overall Strategy

The way to lose weight, no matter where it happens to be hanging around on your body, is to burn more calories than you consume. This means you need to increase the number of calories you burn, decrease the number of calories you eat or do some combination of the two. For every 3,500 calories you eliminate by burning more or eating less, you lose a pound. Many healthy experts, including MayoClinic.com, suggest that you lose no more than one or two pounds per week. This means you should increase your burn or decrease your intake by 500 calories per day.

Lose It All Over

Give up the quest to target belly and thigh fat. You developed fat in those areas because you consumed more calories than your body burned off. Your body, hating to waste energy, packed those excess calories into storage areas -- fat cells -- whose location was genetically determined, apparently, to include your thighs and belly, according to Gene Star, M.D. from the Stanford School of Medicine. When you decrease your caloric intake to below what you use operating your body, your body starts to raid those energy stores. However, even if you do intensive abdominal and thigh exercises, your muscles and body take fat proportionately from wherever it resides, not just from your belly and thighs. Targeted exercise builds muscle strength and tone in the targeted muscles, but draws calories from everywhere. To lose weight from your thighs and belly, you're going to have to lose weight from all over.

Basic Calorie Reduction Guides

Eliminate high calories foods, especially if they don't also offer nutrition. Replace full-calorie soda with diet soda and whole milk with non-fat milk. Drop candy, ice cream, chips, bakery, fried foods, processed foods, sweetened cereal, fast foods and high-fat foods that include hamburgers, hot dogs and pizza. Save these calorie-rich teen favorites for special occasions only. Eat skinless chicken and turkey breast for protein and load up on veggies and salads. While you can eat just about all the vegetable you want, decrease the portions of the other foods you eat.

Easing Into It

Make the weight loss process easier and more manageable by gradually making adjustments in your diet, rather than embarking on a severe calorie-restricted diet. Set goals to steadily, one by one, target foods to drop or replace with healthy, lower-calorie alternatives. Help reduce your appetite by learning to like green tea. It has no calories, dulls your appetite, raises your metabolism and burns calories. (Also, sate your appetite 30 minutes before meals with an apple. Apples have a kind of fiber, pectin, that not only decreases your appetite but also prevents fat from being absorbed into your body.

Increase Burn

The best way to burn calories is to use the large muscles in your lower body. Walk, run, jog, dance, skate, bike or swim or do sports that include basketball, gymnastics, softball, track or hockey. Join the pep or cheerleading squad, do martial arts or just walk around town. Find a way to get your heart pumping and your lungs heaving for at least 30 minutes a day to burn hundreds of calories. You can also add small calorie-zapping tricks to your burn strategy. Chewing gum decreases your appetite and burns 11 calories per hour and tapping your feet, shaking your leg and fidgeting can burn 350 calories per day.