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How To Lose Love Handles

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Everyone hates love handles. Its that area of fat that hanging around your hips that you just cant seem to get rid of no matter how hard you try.

For some reason in most people your sides seem to attract fat deposits like magnets and this can be very frustrating.

The good news is if you want to lose love handles then you can take several steps to start burning them away.

Getting rid of love handles is no different to burning fat on other areas of your body and you need to switch your body into fat burning mode. The best way to do this is to firstly look at your diet.

The secret of fat loss is to burn more calories then you consume. By following a calorie controlled diet or just by cutting out crappy junk foods your body will dip into its fat deposits and start burning your fat for energy rather then the food you just consumed.

Top Tip

Consume 6 small meals a day spaced out a few hours apart. This will help keep your metabolism burning and your energy levels high.

You don't need to follow a full blown diet in order to see results and by making simple changes to what you eat can produce some great results in the beginning. Here are a few examples of simple adjustments you could make.

1. Cut out the funk foods
   Sweets and fatty foods contain empty calories that have no use to your body at all and just get stored as fat.
   
   
2. Don't eat after 6pm
   By eating late at night and then going to bed your body wont have time to burn that food off or use it as energy therefore will get stored while you sleep.
   
   
3. Drink more water
   Water helps increase your metabolism and flush toxins from your body. Aim for 2-3litres a day.
   
   
4. Eat healthy fats
   Oily fish such as salmon contains healthy fats omega 3, 6 and 9. Healthy fats will help provide your body with the fats it needs. This will help prevent fat storage and regulate hormone levels.
   
   
5. Don't skip breakfast
   Missing breakfast will cause you to snack throughout the morning. They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day and it is. Your body would have been fasting throughout the night and will need food.

After your diet is in order the next thing that you should be doing is working out to burn body fat. You should be looking at either full body weight training workouts, high intensity cardio sessions or a mixture of both.

You should be aiming for at least 3 sessions per week and you can pick one of the workouts from this site by using the navigation bar on the left.

The combination or cardio training and healthy eating will start to reduce your fat deposits and you will start to lose love handles gradually. The next step is to tone and firm your abdominal muscles which will tighten everything up.

There are several exercises that are good for targeting your sides (oblique's) and are demonstrated below.

Top Tip

Don't just rely on side bends and side twists to lose love handles. Too much oblique work will cause the muscles to grow under the layer of fat and they will appear bigger.

A good home abdominal workout should include exercises for the entire abdominal section to balance out your body.

Love Handle Targeting Exercises

Dumbbell Side Bends

Dumbbell side bends really target your oblique's and when doing this exercise you should focus on tensing and crunching your abs as you do the movement.

Starting Position: Stand with your feet about shoulder width apart.
Hold a DB in each hand.

Laterally bend your torso to the side and then repeat to the other side.

Return to starting position.

If you do not have access to dumbbells then don't worry you can do them without any weights or use a house hold object such as a bag of sugar to add some extra resistance.

 

Russian Twists

This is another of my favourite abdominal exercises, it is so easy to do and you can feel it working your sides as you do each rep.

The exercise can be done with a medicine ball as shown or by holding a weight plate or any other moderately heavy item.

Alternatively you can do the exercise without any weight and just concentrate on your own bodies resistance as you do each rep.

There are plenty more abdominal exercises that target the oblique muscles, but the above two are just examples of some of the ones you could add to your workout.

You don't need to train your abs everyday in order to lose love handles. 1-2 training sessions per week will suffice. Below are examples of 3 different abs workouts you could choose from. Just tack them onto the end of a cardio session or weight training workout.

 

Abs Workout 1

Sit Ups
Leg raises
Twisting sit ups

Abs Workout 2

Crunches
Reverse crunches
Bicycle Crunch

Abs Workout 3

Double crunch
Knee Ins
Wood Chops (With a light dumbbell)

For each exercise perform 2 sets of as many reps as you can do. Rest 60 seconds between sets. Each week you should aim to do 5 more reps then you did the week before.

Summary

To melt away those love handles you need to do a combination of the following:

1) A calorie controlled diet
2) Regular high intensity exercise
3) Tone and firm your abdominal's

Anyone can achieve great results from their training if they are consistent and dedicated to achieving their goals.

A good point to remember is that once you have gotten rid of those ugly love handles you will need to maintain your nutrition and training plans in order for them to stay away.

 

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