Getting Rid Of Love Handles

The question about getting rid of love handles literally blows up my mail box every single day. Here are some tough truths about it and how you can really get a handle on your love handles.

Suck This Up

First of all, to get rid of love landles, you have to lose weight all over, and the problem areas will usually be the last ones to go.  I see a lot of exercises all over the internet that promise you if you do them, it will help you lose love handles, but really there are no such exercises.  Try them and you will see that I am right.  It is a combination of many different things such as diet, exercise and hormones that will bring you the best results.  Your nutrition is the most important aspect, but let’s also discuss some other tips that you can use in your battle with love handles.

Lose Body Fat The Natural Way

The natural way of losing body fat can be a slow process, but it’s indefinitely safer than “fat burning” pills and, trust me, it will improve your health far better than getting liposuction.  It takes time, but if you lose weight this way, your body will drain all problem spots on its own.  So don’t try to trick your body, because it could backfire and in the end you might just end up sick and frustrated.

Control Your Stress Level

When we are stressed, our body releases a hormone called cortisol.  It is normal to have cortisol in our body in certain amounts, but when we are under a high amount of stress and if we keep on stressing then there will be too much cortisol in our system.  As research has shown that there may be a connection between high levels of cortisol and fat stored on your mid-section, controlling stress may do its bit in helping you reduce your love handles. If you want to find out how to cope with stress, I’ve written an article on it you may want to check out.

Strengthen All Muscle Groups In Your Body

This is a big mistake a lot of women make.  They only workout their problem areas.  This is so wrong I can’t even begin to tell you.  Our body works as one, not part by part, and you can’t get rid of fat over one area by training that area.  If you want your body to lose the fat on the problem areas, you have to do strength training exercises for the entire body and all omuscle groups.

Change Your Workout Style

I’ve met people who do the same two or three workouts all the time.  Somebody asked me the other day: “I’ve been working out for 2 years, how long do you think until I have abs? “.  Imagine my face when I read that!  Yep, I had to pick my jaw off the floor.  I started asking this lady to give me details of her current program and guess what she told me?  She’s been doing 2 workouts and switching between them back and forth for 2 years.  Sounds pretty depressing doesn’t it?  I’m surprised she hadn’t given up.

You want to get rid of these, you better keep your body engaged.

But seriously, if you want to progress, you from time to time have to change your style of training as well as the exercises you are doing.  Our body gets used to working out so fast, we need to keep up in order to experience improvements.  You have to see progress (a bit more weight, one rep more etc.) every 2 weeks or less.

Get Plenty Of Rest

Resting is one of the biggest aspects of everything.  Without proper rest we can’t function in a healthy way. Keeping our bodies  under constant stress keeps those love handles from changing. Because we simply can’t perform to the best of our ability or we starting eating more than we should because of all that stress. Give yourself a break from exercising for at least a week every 6 weeks.  Leave your body alone and let it recover.

Eat Clean But Sin A Little

The same goes for eating clean.  It’s good to eat healthy, but once in a while we have to allow our selves to just relax a little.  I’m not saying go on a rampage of eating junk food, I am just saying it’s OK to once a week allow your self to eat what you want, what ever it may be. It’s all about balance!

If you combine eating well, exercising the right way, getting plenty of rest and lower your stress levels, your love handles as well as many other handles you might have will simply disappear.

Pictures courtesy of Robert McDonald and “Aspen04“.