Best cardio for inner thighs

A moderate calorie deficit and a well structured resistance routine to help preserve the muscle you have.

Also, you shouldn't do cardio every day. Your improvements come when you get rest.

RunRun72 wrote: »

I hate resistance training because it does not burn much calories and if I do cardio , I get to burn calories and therefore , eat more

Why not incorporate both? You can run a full body program 3x per week, it doesn't take that much time. And do cardio and keep active on the other days. Strength training is so much more than a calorie burn.

michelle172415 wrote: »

MelanieCN77 wrote: »

michelle172415 wrote: »

RunRun72 wrote: »

I hate resistance training because it does not burn much calories and if I do cardio , I get to burn calories and therefore , eat more

Actually, while cardio may burn more calories in the moment, strength training actually burns more calories in the long run. Fat cells don't burn calories, but muscles do, so the more muscle you have, the more calories you are burning, even when you aren't working out. Plus, the body also burns calories post strength training to help to heal the muscles. So yes, one hour of cardio burns more calories than one hour of strength training, but strength training burns calories during the activity, after the activity during recovery, and long term through increased muscle mass.

Isn't it about 4 calories per pound of muscle gained? While I agree some resistance training is likely beneficial to all, that "extra burn" is hardly a selling point.

I'm not a scientist, so I don't know the exact number of calories, but even if the added muscle mass does burn an additional 4 calories per hour per day, after an entire year, you'd lose 10lbs doing nothing extra. Heck, even if it's only 4 calories per day, after an entire year you'd still lose 1/2lb, again, for doing nothing extra.

While not super scientific, I think that this quote does a great job of explaining it in laymans terms. "But resistance training builds muscle, and muscle burns calories, Keith says. "Muscle is metabolically active, meaning that the more of it you have on your body the more calories you'll burn throughout the day even when you're not exercising,"Nick Clayton, M.S., M.B.A., personal training program manager at the National Strength and Conditioning Association, tells SELF. Experts know that lean muscle mass requires more energy to maintain itself than fat. The more muscle you have, the more calories it needs (and therefore, burns) every day, though the exact number is hotly debated." Source https://www.self.com/story/whats-better-for-burning-calories-cardio-or-weight-training

I'm in camp "do both" for a variety of reasons including the higher metabolic activity of muscle, but 4 calories per pound really isn't much, in context.

Realistically, without performance enhancing drugs (PEDs), it's probably going to take a woman a month or more to add a pound of muscle, when all factors are close to perfect (relative youth, well-designed progressive lifting program consistently done, proper protein intake, a calorie surplus, . . . ). Muscle at rest burns about 4 calories more per day per pound than fat (around 6 vs. around 2 - fat is metabolically active). (There is debate about whether those are the exact numbers, but the point is, they're not very big numbers).

So, yes, not quite an extra half pound a year of calorie burn (365 x 4 = 1460; pound of fat about 3500; 0.42 pounds). And that's a good thing.

But I can do 250 calories of cardio - what I want to do daily just for fun and for health reasons anyway - and burn that half a pound in a week. (7 x 250 = 1750). Alternatively, if I don't care about cardiovascular health, I can just eat 250 calories below my maintenance calories, and burn that same half pound of fat.

Yes, there is afterburn from strength training, and a caloric benefit from muscle repair. Cardio also has an afterburn (EPOC, excess post-exercise oxygen consumption) and requires muscle repair, though the muscle repair is generally significantly less. But it's not zero. It's not a huge difference, and these aren't huge numbers either. NBD.

There are lots of reasons to strength train: Strength is useful, there is no "tone" without muscles, there is that small bit of extra metabolic activity, there's probably a bit of a calorie bonus when active as a muscular person vs. a similar-weight fat one, a muscular person at X weight will be smaller and tighter (look better, for most people's tastes) than a less muscular one of the same height and weight, strength training does burn calories (though fewer per minute than most cardio), and more.

In particular, OP, if your goal is slim and "toned" inner thighs, your best and quickest route is a calorie deficit (through eating reductions or cardio) to lose the fat, and strength training to preserve/build some muscle. (Most people can preserve muscle by strength training in a calorie deficit, but can't add much muscle mass. People new to strength training may add a little, even in a small calorie deficit, but preservation is the big deal. Also, strength can increase significantly even in a deficit, and appearance can improve. But most gains will happen more readily after weight loss.)

If you don't enjoy strength training, you don't have to do it, that's your decision. But it is the best route to your goal, if you're clear-headed about the math and the biology/physiology of it.

Spot reduction? Nope, doesn't work. I do one of the more leg-strength-intensive forms of so-called cardio, rowing (boats when I can, machines when I must), and have rowed multiple times a week for 16 years. When I lost weight, I had some OK leg muscles under the fat . . . but even at 120 pounds (5'5") I still had inner thigh fat, because that's one of the spots my body is genetically pre-disposed to hang onto fat the longest. Meh. Strong and healthy matters to me, cute doesn't. YMMV.