Hip dips don’t actually change shape on their own, since they’re determined by your bone structure. But several factors can make them look more noticeable over time, including shifts in body fat, hormonal changes, muscle loss, and decreased skin elasticity. If yours seem worse than they used to be, something about the tissue surrounding your pelvis has changed, not the bone itself.
What Hip Dips Actually Are
Hip dips are the inward curve between your hip bone and the top of your thigh bone. Anatomically, this is the space between the iliac crest (the top of your pelvis) and the greater trochanter (the bony knob at the top of your femur). Everyone has this gap in their skeleton. How visible it is depends on the width of your pelvis, the angle of your femur, and how much muscle and fat fill in that space.
Because the underlying structure is bone, hip dips never fully disappear. But the soft tissue covering them, fat, muscle, and skin, fluctuates throughout your life. That’s why they can look dramatically different from one year to the next.
Weight Loss Removes Padding First
The most common reason hip dips suddenly look worse is losing body fat. Fat doesn’t leave your body evenly. The lateral hip area, right where the dip sits, tends to carry a thin layer of subcutaneous fat that softens the contour. When you lose weight, that layer can thin out before fat in other areas does, making the indentation more visible even though your overall shape is leaner.
This is especially true if you’ve lost weight quickly or through heavy calorie restriction without strength training. You lose both fat and muscle, and the hip dip area ends up with less of everything cushioning the bone. Conversely, gaining weight in certain patterns can also make hip dips look deeper. If fat accumulates above the dip (at the waist or love handles) and below it (outer thighs) but not in the dip itself, the contrast makes the indentation appear more dramatic.
Hormonal Shifts Redirect Where Fat Goes
Estrogen plays a major role in where your body stores fat. Before menopause, estrogen signals fat to accumulate in subcutaneous deposits across the lower body, including the hips, thighs, and buttocks. This is a big part of why hip dips often look softer during your reproductive years.
During perimenopause and menopause, falling estrogen levels shift fat storage away from the lower body and toward the abdomen. That means the lateral hip area gradually loses volume while your midsection gains it. The result: hip dips that seemed barely noticeable at 30 can look significantly more pronounced at 45 or 50, even if your weight hasn’t changed much.
Other periods of hormonal fluctuation can have similar effects. Pregnancy, postpartum recovery, starting or stopping hormonal birth control, and puberty all alter estrogen levels and can temporarily or permanently redistribute lower-body fat. If your hip dips seemed to worsen around any of these transitions, hormonal fat redistribution is the likely explanation.
Muscle Loss Makes the Dip Deeper
The gluteus medius is the muscle that sits directly over the hip dip area. When it’s well-developed, it fills in the indentation and creates a smoother curve from waist to thigh. When it’s underdeveloped or has atrophied, there’s simply less tissue bridging the gap between your pelvis and femur.
Adults lose roughly 3 to 8 percent of their muscle mass per decade after age 30, and the rate accelerates after 60. If you’ve become less active, switched from strength training to mostly cardio, or spent long periods sitting at a desk, your gluteus medius is one of the first muscles to weaken. It’s not a muscle that gets much work during walking or running. It activates primarily during lateral movements, single-leg stability work, and targeted hip exercises.
This is also why some people notice hip dips worsening after an injury or surgery that kept them off their feet. A few weeks of inactivity can visibly reduce the muscle volume in this area.
Skin Changes Add to the Appearance
As you age, your skin produces less collagen and elastin, the proteins that keep it firm and bouncy. You also lose fat in the deeper layers of skin, which makes surface contours more prominent. Lines, creases, and depressions that were once smoothed over by plump, elastic skin become more visible.
Sun exposure and tanning accelerate this process by breaking down elastin fibers. The hip area may not get as much sun as your face, but the general decline in skin elasticity across your body still applies. Thinner, less elastic skin drapes more tightly over underlying bone and muscle, making the hip dip contour sharper and more defined.
Exercises That Target the Hip Dip Area
You can’t eliminate hip dips entirely, but building the gluteus medius can meaningfully fill in the indentation. The key is exercises that work the side of your hip, not just the back of it. Standard squats and deadlifts primarily target the gluteus maximus, which sits behind and below the dip. For the dip itself, you need lateral and abduction work.
- Side-lying hip abductions: Lie on your side and lift your top leg slowly, keeping your hips stacked. Add an ankle weight once bodyweight feels easy.
- Banded lateral walks: Place a resistance band around your ankles or just above your knees and walk sideways, keeping tension on the band throughout.
- Curtsy lunges: Step one leg behind and across your body, lowering into a lunge. This loads the gluteus medius of the front leg through its full range.
- Single-leg Romanian deadlifts: These challenge lateral hip stability and build the gluteus medius alongside the rest of the posterior chain.
Consistency matters more than intensity. Training these movements two to three times per week for 8 to 12 weeks typically produces visible changes in the contour of the lateral hip. Progressive overload, gradually increasing resistance or volume, keeps the muscle adapting.
Fat Grafting for Hip Dips
For people who want a more immediate or dramatic change, fat grafting to the hip dip zone is a cosmetic procedure that has become increasingly common. A surgeon harvests fat from another area of your body (often the abdomen or flanks) and injects it into the trochanteric depression to smooth the contour.
Modern techniques place the fat strictly in the subcutaneous layer, which significantly reduces the risk of fat embolism compared to older deep-injection methods. In a recent retrospective analysis, patients who underwent the procedure saw their waist-to-hip ratio drop by an average of 0.07, a measurable change in overall silhouette. Complications were minimal, mostly mild bruising at the donor site and slight irregularities that resolved with massage.
The main limitation is fat resorption. Your body reabsorbs some of the transferred fat over the first few months. One patient in the study lost 65 to 70 percent of the grafted fat due to not following post-operative care instructions, though the issue was corrected with a revision procedure and better adherence. Most surgeons overfill slightly to account for expected resorption, and following recovery guidelines closely (avoiding pressure on the area, wearing compression garments) improves how much fat survives long-term.
Why They Seem Worse in Certain Lighting
It’s worth noting that hip dips can look dramatically different depending on lighting, clothing, and posture. Overhead lighting casts shadows that deepen any surface contour. High-waisted leggings that compress above and below the dip can push soft tissue away from the indentation, making it more visible. Standing with your weight shifted to one leg relaxes the gluteus medius on that side, letting the dip show more than it would if you were standing evenly or flexing.
If you’re noticing your hip dips primarily in the mirror at a certain time of day, in certain clothes, or in photos taken from specific angles, the change may be partly perceptual. Comparing photos taken in consistent lighting and posture over time gives you a more accurate picture of whether the contour has actually changed.