Can everyone have a thigh gap? Short story: No. And for good reason – we're all different. 'For some people, a thigh gap is a natural part of their bone structure and genetics,' says Dr Rekha Tailor, GP, cosmetic doctor and medical director at Health & Aesthetics.
You don't need a thigh gap to be a healthy person. In fact, very healthy and athletic women are unlikely to have a thigh gap, even if they have very low body fat. That's because athletic legs have muscle and muscle naturally makes the thighs touch.
In practise, it's rare enough that something like 5% women in this world will have a natural thigh gap without resorting to drastic and dangerous measures. Despite this (or maybe because of this) teeny, tiny percentage, thigh gaps have become the most coveted “It accessory”.
The primary determining factor for whether you have a thigh gap isn't body weight, a healthy diet or strength training – it's the width of your hips. Yup, that's it! People with wider hip bones are more likely to have a natural thigh gap, and people with narrow-set hip bones are less likely to have one.
Exercise – Thigh Gap Workout
What we can work on is, toning and strengthening the muscles on the inside of our legs. These are called your hip abductors. Working on these muscles will result in more toned and tighter inner thigh muscles, which can give a prominent gap.
Anatomically speaking however, femurs should hang fairly vertical from the pelvis in standing posture. Unless you are underweight or have femurs that are extremely bowed or your hip joints live unusually far apart inside the pelvis, your thighs will touch.
In the 21st century, some people in the West have begun to consider the thigh gap a special feature of physical attractiveness and physical fitness in women. In the United States, it was reported that among teenage girls, a gap had become a beauty ideal.
In other words, belly fat and thigh fat are genetically destined for their final location during development. It's not a difference that's acquired over time, as a result of diet or environmental exposure.
Ok, a thigh gap is only due to the structure of your pelvis. Some women have them, others don't, regardless of weight.
Basically, having a gap between your thighs was considered beautiful, which shamed a ton of women whose thighs naturally touch. The mermaid thigh movement recognizes that other group of women—those who don't have a natural thigh gap—effectively giving every woman a body-positive trend to identify with.
Can everyone have a thigh gap? Short story: No. And for good reason – we're all different. 'For some people, a thigh gap is a natural part of their bone structure and genetics,' says Dr Rekha Tailor, GP, cosmetic doctor and medical director at Health & Aesthetics.
#thighgap, Tumblr. The Tumblr trend of early 2013 was the "inner thigh gap" — the space between the thighs that appears when (very few) women touch their feet together. It's associated with anorexia and an obsessive desire to be as thin as possible.
Most women are endomorphs—curvy, feminine and soft. Mesomorphs are muscular with a medium frame. And ectomorphs are slender, with lean muscles and minimal fat, good candidates for thigh gap.
This is a common condition in women and can occur at any age due to genetics, ageing and when you consume more calories than your body needs or is able to burn, which then turns into fat.
According to the National Centre for Health Statistics, the average female thigh circumference is 20.8 inches or 52.9 cm. This is based on a sample size of 4,065 women. As with male data, the average female thigh size grows and declines with age, although to a lower amount.
YOU DON'T DO ENOUGH OF CARDIO
I know a lot of trainers won't agree with me, but cardio is the best exercise for slimming down your legs, especially low intensity cardio such as walking. Walking somehow seems to get rid of excess fat on your thighs much better than any other form of workout.
People whose thighs measured less than 60 centimeters, or about 23.6 inches in circumference, were in trouble. And those with stick-thin gams (less than 18 inches around) were at the greatest risk, according to new study in the online version of the British Medical Journal.
Researchers tracked the volunteers for an average of 12.5 years. They found that people with big thighs had a lower risk of heart disease and premature death than those with thin thighs.
It might be your genetics—unfortunately, some of us are just born with more fat cells and fewer muscle cells than Jillian Michaels, says Wayne Westcott, Ph. D., director of exercise research at Quincy College. But even if that's the case, don't kiss the dream of dynamite thighs good-bye.
Unless your goal is to gain weight overall, you're better off focusing on building muscle mass. Strength training focusing on your quadriceps and hamstrings, as well as eating sufficient calories and protein, can help build greater muscle mass to increase the size of your thighs.
Men self-purported to have crurophilia tend to view the legs as the most attractive part of the female body because of their seductively-teasing nature. Whereas display of the breasts and buttocks is considerably "in your face", presentation of the legs offers more control over how much and for how long.
Dieting and exercise will not give you a thigh gap overnight — it is a long-term lifestyle change, not a quick fix. Physical results could take as long as three to four weeks to start showing. Even then, some girls' genetics keep them from achieving a thigh gap, no matter how skinny they are.
If you have weight to lose or if you're carrying extra body fat, squats (and other lower body strength exercises) can help reduce weight and/or body fat, making your butt and thighs comparatively smaller, tighter, more toned and more compact.
Thigh chafing, dubbed “chub rub,” is often associated with being overweight. However, weight loss or weight fluctuations of any type can also lead to chafing. Chafing is not caused by excess weight, it is caused by skin-on-skin friction, which can happen to anyone of any size.