How to Get Rid of Love Handles

Though they sound like a great thing, nobody really wants love handles. They can be one of the most unattractive places to gain weight, because they make it difficult for clothes to fit properly.

They can also be one of the most difficult areas of the body to work on. Here are some tips for getting rid of those love handles if you happen to be one of the people carrying them around.

What Are Love Handles?

Love handles are “pudges” or pockets of fat around your midsection – right about the spot where someone would hug you; hence the name.

This area just happens to be one where many people tend to accumulate fat, and this fat can be difficult to get rid of.

5 Methods for Reducing Love Handles

1. Perform More Cardiovascular Exercise

Love handles are just fat. And, the best way to get rid of fat is to burn it off through cardiovascular activity.

Try walking, running, swimming or cycling. Better yet; put some high intensity intervals into which ever cardiovascular exercise you choose. These are just bursts of high intensity activity periodically during your workout. You’ll burn a lot more fat this way.

2. Eat Right

It is very difficult to lose fat through exercise alone. Reduce your calorie intake so that you can shed a few pounds. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables, along with lean protein. Cut out sugar and simple carbohydrates like white bread and pasta.

3. Work Your Core Muscles

Core exercises can help strengthen your back, pelvis hips and abdomen. This will give you better posture, which will make you look leaner while you finish losing those love handles. It will also make you stronger for performing the exercise you need to lose the love handles and keep them off.

4. Target Your Oblique Muscles

Doing abdominal exercises can strengthen and tone you along the sides of the abdomen, where we get love handles. It won’t remove the fat there, but it will tone up the muscle.

5. Perform Strength Training

In order to make it harder for those love handles to come back once they’re gone, it’s important to reduce the amount of fat in your body and increase the amount of muscle at the same time.

Muscle uses more calories in a day, even when resting, than fat. Therefore, the more muscle you have, the more you can eat without developing love handles.

Losing weight anywhere on the body, including in the area where we get love handles, requires a total body approach, since the idea of “spot reducing” is really a myth.

But, if you combine eating right and cardiovascular exercise, you can lose a lot of body fat, including that fat which has accumulated around your midsection.

If you combine those diet and exercise methods with some strength training to tone and gain muscle, especially throughout your core and midsection, you’ll likely find that you can kiss those love handles goodbye forever.