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Hip dips are the slight hollows on the outside of the hips, a few centimetres below the hip bone, that show up in fitted jeans, leggings or a lehenga skirt. They are mostly a matter of build. The hollow sits over the greater trochanter, the bony knob at the top of the thigh bone, and the width of your pelvis decides how much it shows. Muscle and fat above and below it change how deep it looks. The soft roll you can pinch on top of the hip bone, where a saree is tucked in, is fat and part of your waist.
That roll gets smaller as body fat comes down, while the hollow under it mostly stays. Dieting cannot change bone, and side leg raises cannot burn fat from one spot. Building the glutes, especially the gluteus medius on the side of the pelvis, adds muscle around the dip and can make it shallower. For health, the waist is the part to work on.
What are hip dips?
Hip dips are the shallow hollows on the outer hips, a hand's width below the waist. You notice them most in a trial room mirror, in fitted jeans or a churidar. The outline curves out at the hip bone, tucks in, then curves out again over the top of the thigh. Some people barely have one. Others have a clear violin shape.
Cosmetic doctors call it the trochanteric depression. The greater trochanter is the knob at the top of the thigh bone that you can feel on the outer hip when you sit cross-legged on the floor. Lourenco and colleagues describe the dip as a hollow around that knob, sharper in women with athletic, well-defined buttock muscles and often deeper with age.
Ultrasound mapping of the buttock and hip treats this area as a zone of its own, separate from the buttock behind it and the outer thigh below. Several hip muscles and tendons anchor to bone here, so the fat layer over the trochanter is usually thinner than on the buttock or thigh.
Are hip dips fat or bone?
Both play a part. Where the hollow sits is set by bone: how wide your pelvis is, how high the hip bone rides and how far the trochanter juts out. Diet and exercise cannot change any of that.
Muscle and fat then fill in around the frame. The padding over the trochanter tends to stay thin, while the buttock above and the outer thigh below can hold a good deal more. More fat above and below makes the dip look deeper. More gluteal muscle on the side of the hip tends to make it look shallower.
Many women have a dip and a fat roll at the same time, so look at them one by one. The roll on top of the hip bone, where a saree or salwar drawstring sits, is fat and shrinks as your overall body fat falls. A fuller patch on the outer thigh, sometimes called saddlebags, is fat too. The hollow between them is mostly structure.
After weight loss, some women find the dip looks deeper, because the thigh and buttock padding around it has thinned. Others see it soften after a few months of glute work. Neither change tells you anything about your health.
What is the fat above hip dips?
The soft roll above the dip, over the top of the hip bone, is the side of your waist. People call it love handles or a muffin top. It is fat under the skin, and it usually comes and goes along with the fat on the rest of your belly.
The waist is where health risk shows, which is why this part deserves more attention than the dip. The Indian consensus statement led by Misra treats a waist of 80 cm or more in women, and 90 cm or more in men, as abdominal obesity. Indians tend to store fat around the belly and liver at lower body weights than Europeans.
Measure the waist halfway between the lowest rib and the top of the hip bone, after breathing out. Then measure the hips around the widest part of the buttocks. The World Health Organization treats a waist-hip ratio of 0.85 or more in women, or 0.90 or more in men, as raised metabolic risk.
For example, a woman with an 84 cm waist and 100 cm hips has a ratio of 0.84, just under the line. Her waist is already past 80 cm, though, and a few centimetres off it would lower her risk more than any change to the shape of her hips.
Why do women carry more fat on the hips and thighs?
Each fat store in the body grows from its own family of cells. Fried and colleagues reviewed how sex chromosomes and hormones, oestrogen in particular, steer women's fat towards the hips, buttocks and thighs and men's towards the belly. That is why a brother and sister on the same home cooking can gain weight in quite different places.
Hip and thigh fat is also the safer place to store it. Manolopoulos and colleagues at Oxford reviewed population studies and found that more fat on the hips and thighs went with better cholesterol and blood sugar, and lower heart risk, whatever the total fat. This fat takes up fatty acids after meals and holds them for the long term, keeping them out of the liver and away from the heart.
If your weight sits mostly on your hips and thighs, that pattern carries less metabolic risk than the same weight around the belly. Belly fat is the store linked to diabetes and heart disease, and Indian women tend to gain it at lower weights than European women.
Around menopause, as oestrogen falls, many women find fat moving from the hips to the waist, and the blouse that fitted at 45 is tight at 52. A growing waist at that age is a better reason to act than the shape of your hips.
Can exercise get rid of hip dips?
No exercise reshapes bone, and no exercise burns fat from one chosen spot, however many side leg raises a reel tells you to do. Ramirez-Campillo and colleagues in Chile had 11 young adults work only one leg on a leg press, around a thousand light repetitions a session, three times a week for 12 weeks. They did lose some fat, but it came off the arms and trunk rather than the trained leg.
Exercise can build the muscles around the dip, though. The gluteus medius sits on the side of the pelvis, just above the trochanter. It is the muscle that keeps your hips level when you stand on one leg to put on a chappal. The gluteus maximus wraps round the back and side of the buttock. Bigger glutes add volume above and behind the hollow.
The trials measured muscle growth, not hip outlines, so nobody can promise how much your dip will change. A dip that comes mainly from a wide pelvis and a prominent trochanter will stay visible. One that looked sharp partly because the side glutes were small has more room to fill.
Sources: [7]
Which exercises help fill out hip dips?
The muscle you most want to build is the gluteus medius, the fan-shaped muscle on the side of the pelvis just above the dip. Walking to the market, sitting at a desk and climbing stairs lean mostly on bigger muscles, so it often stays weak. Macadam and colleagues went through 23 studies that measured the glutes during hip exercises. The side muscle worked hardest in a side plank with the top leg lifted, in standing leg raises against a band round the ankles, and in plain side-lying leg raises.
The gluteus maximus, the big buttock muscle, needs heavier work. In a trial by Plotkin and colleagues, 34 untrained young adults did hip thrusts or back squats for nine weeks. MRI scans showed similar glute growth in both groups, and the squatters built more thigh too. Krause Neto and colleagues pooled 12 studies and found deep squats, leg press and kneeling hip extensions also built the muscle.
A home version, two or three evenings a week, takes about 25 minutes. Do side-lying leg raises and banded leg raises, then glute bridges and step-ups onto the bottom stair, three sets of 12 or 15 slow repetitions each. A resistance band from any sports shop is enough to start. When bridges feel easy, rest your upper back on the sofa or diwan and do hip thrusts with a school bag of books across your hips.
Muscle comes on slowly, so judge it over months. A front and back photo every four weeks, in the same leggings and light, shows changes the mirror hides.
Does losing weight make hip dips better or worse?
That depends on where your fat sits now. If a roll spills over the top of your jeans or saree petticoat, losing it straightens the line from waist to hip. If you are already slim, losing more can thin the buttock and outer thigh padding, and the dip may stand out a little more.
What protects the shape is keeping muscle while you lose fat. A crash diet of fruit and soup takes muscle with it, and the glutes are among the largest muscles in the body. A moderate calorie cut, a good portion of dal, curd, eggs, paneer, chicken or fish at each meal, and two or three strength sessions a week push the loss towards fat.
The same approach scales up for people with more weight to lose. A doctor-led plan aims for a loss of up to 20% of body weight while keeping muscle. It starts with a home blood test, and a doctor goes through the results with you before setting food and training targets.
Measure your waist and hips every two weeks with a tailor's tape. A falling waist with hips that hold steady means your waist-hip ratio is improving, which is the change that matters for health.
Do fillers or fat transfer fix hip dips?
Some cosmetic clinics in the bigger cities now fill the hollow with injectable fillers, or with fat moved from the belly or thighs. Lourenco and colleagues described one filler technique in 11 women and reported that the women liked the results. It was a short case series with no comparison group, so it says little about how long results last or how often problems occur.
Fillers and fat grafting are purely cosmetic and carry the usual risks of injections or surgery. If you are thinking about one, go to a qualified dermatologist or plastic surgeon registered with the medical council. Ask how long the result is expected to last, how many sessions it takes, and what happens to it if your weight changes.
Sources: [1]