Can You Exercise to Get Rid of Fat Fingers?

Fat fingers might be a drag, but there aren't any specific exercises you can do to thin them out. If you want thin fingers, you'll have to lose overall body fat via diet and exercise.

It would be nice if hand-specific exercises could target the fat on your fingers and slim them down, but it's not possible to reduce fat in a specific place on your body, according to the American Council on Exercise. While exercises that target specific places — such as crunches, which focus on the abdominal muscles — can build muscle, it can't do anything about body fat beyond burning a small number of calories.

Additionally, even when you do lose weight through diet or exercise, you can't choose from where the fat is going to come off first. For many people, the first place you gain fat is the first place that you're going to lose it, according to Methodist Health System.

Read more: Discover Your Ultimate Weight-Loss Workout Plan

If you want to lose weight in your fingers, you're going to have to take on a diet and exercise plan that will lead to weight loss throughout your whole body. The first — and potentially most important — step is through your diet, as research in the January 2014 issue of the International Journal of Epidemiology notes that exercise isn't enough to control obesity risk.

Read more: The Best Diets for Weight Loss

Therefore, you'll have to modify your diet. The Mayo Clinic offers a few strategies for making that possible, including aiming for at least four servings of vegetables and three servings of fruit per day, switching from refined grains to whole grains, cutting back on sugar and choosing low-fat dairy, lean meat and poultry rather than their higher-fat counterparts.

The Obesity Medicine Association recommends tracking your caloric intake, noting that it will help you stay accountable to yourself and ensure you stay on your weight-loss plan. The association also recommends eating smaller, more frequent meals that include a serving of lean protein and low-starch vegetables, such as leafy greens.

Although diet is arguably the most important factor in losing weight, exercise can help speed up the process by burning calories. This doesn't refer to spot-training exercises focused on your fingers, but rather cardio, such as running or cycling, and full-body strength-training.

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2015-2020, includes the recommendation for healthy adults to engage in at least 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity physical activity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise, as well as at least two days each week of strength work for all major muscle groups.

Read more: 5 Exercise Mistakes That Can Actually Halt Weight Loss

For the best success in reducing body fat, consider interval training, which involves short bursts of high-intensity efforts followed by a period of recovery. This might be interspersing running with walking or sprinting on the stationery bike followed by a slow pace. A review of research published in February 2019 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine determined that interval training had a greater effect on total fat mass than moderate-intensity continuous training.