As you workout, you gain more muscle that will ultimately replace your fat. There will be a period of time where your body has both this newly formed muscle AND fat. This is basically like a transition period for your body. Hence, your thighs are a little bigger until the fat is burned away.
IF YOU ARE NEW TO EXERCISE
Any type of exercise (even cardio) will build some muscle. So at the start, you might build muscle before reducing your body fat. In this case, your legs might look bigger at the start, but eventually, your body fat will decrease and your legs will get smaller.
The main culprit behind weight gain in your thighs is estrogen. This hormone drives the increase in fat cells in females, causing deposits to form most commonly around the buttocks and thighs.
While there's not a lot you can do to lose weight from just your thighs (since you can't spot-burn fat), eating healthy and exercising can help you slim down overall. Do cardio to burn calories and try strength-training to tone your thigh muscles, which can help them look more defined.
Although you can't lose weight in just your thighs, you can incorporate exercises into your workout that will specifically target your thighs and help to tone them. Try simple exercises like lunges (both forward and side lunges), squats, and leg lifts.
Your Muscles are Retaining Water
Weight training exposes muscles to stress to strengthen them and the resulting soreness causes the surrounding tissues to swell until things calm down. “Extracellular water increases transiently in the muscle to relieve inflammation of the muscle soft-tissues,” Tamaki says.
That's because weight training builds lean muscle mass, which is denser than body fat. A pound of lean muscle mass and a pound of body fat tissue might weigh the same, but they take up different amounts of space.
And doing squats with a proper form will also help you get a lean and toned core and a bigger booty. But you are building these leg muscles, which means you are increasing the size of them (i.e. you are increasing the size of your thighs and hamstrings). Squats don't necessarily get rid of the fat on your legs, either.
The biggest culprits are pasta, white rice and bread, pastries, sodas, and desserts.
The Causes Of Thigh Fat
Sedentary Lifestyle: thigh fat is a sign of atrophied buttocks settling within the thighs. The main reason for this is rooted in a lack of physical activity. If you don't have a somewhat active lifestyle, your blood circulation slows down, resulting in fat accumulation and cellulite.
Your body releases cortisol during exercise, which can impact your fluids and cause your body to retain water. Also note that better blood flow leads to the swelling of the muscles. So, don't panic. Allow your body to adjust to the workout routine and the bloating should disappear after a couple of weeks.
With aging, pregnancy, exercise, or other life events, our hormone levels change, and fat settles in different parts of the body. As women might expect, estrogen causes the preferential distribution of fat to the thighs and butt.
You can see small results in even two to four weeks, after you begin a leg workout. You will have better stamina, and your legs will look a little more defined. But all in all, depending on your fitness levels, it does take three to four months for any remarkable difference.
Choose quality, unprocessed options that include whole grains, vegetables, fresh fruits, low-fat dairy and lean protein, in moderate serving sizes. Pair healthy food choices with exercise to achieve an overall slimmer frame that includes shapely legs.
You may be overweight but if you're pear shaped, your fat may be protecting you from certain diseases! We've heard this before: fat around the hips, buttocks, and thighs is not as bad for you as fat around the middle of the body.
Doing 50 squats a day will increase the muscle tone in you bottom, thighs, calves, hamstrings and stomach.
Muscle Mass
A month or two after you start exercising, your body composition may begin to change. You will likely gain muscle mass and may begin to lose some fat mass. Muscle weighs more than fat, but it also burns more calories.
Have you ever noticed that right after (or even a day or two after) an intense workout the scale goes up? That's normal, and it doesn't necessarily mean you're actually gaining weight, says Dolgan.
However, generally speaking, people tend to lose weight in their face and neck first. When it comes to weight loss, facial and neck fat is typically the first area to experience noticeable reductions. This is because these regions tend to be the most sensitive and react positively to even a small amount of weight loss.
Your clothes are looser – This is often one of the first things you'll notice when you're trying to start losing weight. Once you've gotten past the first few weeks and your body has flushed out bloat and started burning excess fat, your clothes won't feel as tight.