Exercises That Get Rid of Fat on the Upper Back Thigh

Sometimes fat seems to have a GPS that makes it travel to the places where we want it the least. One of these areas, for women, in particular, is the upper back thigh. While genetics are mostly to blame for this unwanted phenomenon, there's some indication that lack of activity can indeed usher the fat cells into thigh territory. Time may play a role too. You probably won't be surprised to learn that fat deposits in the thighs have been associated with aging.

To give your thigh fat the boot, it's far more effective to take a whole body approach that improves your overall fitness than trying to target your efforts to the offending area.

Read more: The Ultimate Guide to Fat Loss

You can't target a particular area for fat reduction — not by doing particular exercises and not by eating a particular way. Alas, there's no such thing as spot reduction, so you'll just have to face the music and slim down in general. Lose weight in a healthy way at a measured pace and excess fat will gradually dissolve as your whole body composition becomes leaner.

In the meantime, it's an immutable law of thermodynamics that in order to lose one pound of fat, you must expend more than 3,500 calories more than you take in. The National Institutes of Health recommends 1 to 2 pounds a week as a healthy rate of weight loss; lose faster and you're risking rebound weight gain.

The math works out rather neatly. Reduce your food intake by 500 calories a day and you'll lose 1 pound a week. There are numerous diet plans out there, but in general, extreme diets don't work in the long run. The best diet is one you can stick with, assuming it involves lean protein, whole grains and lots of vegetables. While there's no way to tell your body to lose the thigh fat first, it will eventually subside as your body's overall fat composition wanes.

Read more: The Fat Loss From Long Cardio vs. HIIT

While weight loss is the first step for losing fat from the back of your upper thighs, it's never too early to start doing exercises that will sculpt and tone the soon-to-be-revealed muscle underneath. Plus, muscle burns more calories than fat, so building muscle sets your body up to stay leaner in the long run.

For the thighs, hamstring curls are a good place to start. There are several variations of this exercise, which strengthens the back of the thighs, and it's a good idea to rotate them. But to keep things in balance, naturally, you'll want to mix in exercises that work the whole thigh. Body-weight squats work the whole enchilada from your butt to your shins. Inverted flyers are a whole-body exercise that targets both the front and back of the thighs.

High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is a method of exercise in which bursts of intensive effort — usually in aerobic exercise — are followed by a typically longer period of rest or at least an interval of considerably less effort.

There's no set formula, but it works like this: If you're on a treadmill, jam at top speed for one minute and go slow for two or three. Or go hard for three minutes and downshift for six. There's a lot of variation in HIIT protocols, and it's really a matter of experimenting until you find the combinations that work for you.

A growing body of research suggests that HIIT may be more effective for reducing subcutaneous fat than conventional aerobic forms of exercise. A study published in September 2017 by Obesity Science & Practice reports that HIIT is more effective for body fat reduction than traditional forms of exercise.