Love Handles and how can you lose them | Love Handles Workout

Love Handles. What connotation do you have when you hear this word? A man with a muffin top having a bulging sides. He's holding his side fat and just despising the way he looks in front of a mirror. Or maybe someone struggling to lose them by doing tons of side bends, crunches, ab exercises, and my favourite- someone wrestling with his side fat (Love Handles), trying to get rid of them by cutting them out with a scissor.

The question arrives how can I lose my love handles? Today in this post I am going to give you an exact step by step guide which will help you get rid of your love handles once and for all. 

I for majority of my life had been struggling my way to get rid of love handles, been doing thousands of side crunches and dumbbell side bends and other sort of abs and side fat reducing exercises; thinking doing these exercises would help me reduce side fat of waist. But they did nothing significant to my avail.

So learning from my mistakes, I've come up with a strategic plan which you can leverage to your fat loss journey.

How to Lose Love Handles Fast

What are Love Handles?

“Love handles” are areas of skin that extend outward from the hips. When combined with tight clothing, love handles can become more pronounced, but they aren't caused by tight clothes alone. They indicate excess fat accumulation around the hips and abdominal area.

Love Handles are a widespread epidemic amongst men. Well as the name suggests "Love Handles" there's nothing to be loved by them or love them. In my opinion love handles have the most ironic name in its own "Love Handles", eeehh that's the only thing that I hate the most in my body and I hope so do you.

Before jumping into how to lose love handles fast we should take into account what causes love handles in the first place.

What Causes Love Handles?

The underlying cause of love handles is fat retention. Generally speaking, fat cells accumulate when your body takes in too many calories or you don't burn as many calories as you're consuming. Over time, these fat cells can become noticeable as they accumulate in certain areas, such as around your waist and hips.

Fat can accumulate anywhere in the body, but there are certain factors that increase the likelihood for retaining fat in the hip, lower back, and abdominal areas. Factors that contribute to love handle formation include:

• hormones, especially too much cortisol (Cortisol is the major and the most prominent culprit of anything bad happening to you, inside your body, from weight gain to weight loss to accumulation of fat, causing you to carry love handles around you all the time)

• age (belly fat accumulation is particularly common as you get older)
• lack of physical activity
• diet high in fats, sugars, and high-calorie foods
• sleep deprivation
• undiagnosed or untreated conditions that slow down your metabolism (hypothyroidism — or underactive thyroid — for example, makes it difficult to burn off extra calories)

Many people try to target this specific area with endless side crunches and other abdominal moves that target the obliques, muscles that run down the sides of the torso.

However, this is not an effective way to lose love handles

In order to get rid of love handles for good, you’re going to need to make dietary, exercise and lifestyle changes. That being said, let's jump into the strategies to get rid of the Love Handles once and for all.

If you want to Lose Love Handles fast naturally and in the most effective and efficient way then follow these advices and say goodbye to that love handle fat.

How to Lose Love Handles and get a V-cut abs

Well if you want to get a v-cut abs and get rid of love handles then you have got to make some dietary changes period.

• Eat in a caloric deficit
• Cut out all the sugars
• Cut out on alcohol consumptions
• Eat fibrous foods
• Consume Leafy greens and Vegetables

With dietary changes you would have to work your way to Fix your Insulin levels because it's insulin which contribute to the accumulation of fat around your belly and the sides, low back etc.

Low Handles should not necessarily have to be a fat problem but a hormonal imbalance and the major hormone that contributes to the accumulation of fat above the buttocks (known as Low Back Fat / Love Handles) is INSULIN.

So, how to lower Insulin levels-

a) No Snacking

Eat 3 meals a day, if you can them aim for only two. Because what happens when you eat, you spike Insulin. Surging Insulin is not a bad thing until a certain point and if you cross that threshold then it creates a lot of fat related and many other problems. 

b) Reduce Sugars

When people eat a food containing carbohydrates or simple sugars, the digestive system breaks down the digestible ones into sugar, which enters the blood. As blood sugar levels rise, the pancreas produces insulin that prompts cells to absorb blood sugar for energy or storage.

c) Eat More Greens

To lower insulin, we have to spike our greens, why? because greens have potassium. Potassium will decrease the need for insulin in fact insulin and potassium work really closely together and if you can actually increase your potassium you will lower the need for insulin.

Spike your greens you will actually improve that, that means bigger salads and leafy green vegetables.

Exercises for Love Handles

There are tons of love handles workout which promise to help you reduce the side fat or attenuate the waste line numbers on an inch tape. All those exercises for love handles don't help you reduce the side fat. Have you ever wonder why? Because they teach you the movements but not the actual activation of the muscle working in those exercise, i.e. Obliques.

In this Love Handles Workout I am going to provide you with the best exercises with proper how to's which will ensure you a chiseled V-cut and attractive abdomen.

Love Handles Workout

These are the best love handles workout for a ripped core. You can do these exercises at home or at the gym.

Before jumping into the actual workout, first we have got to activate our obliques muscles. The activation of obliques will ensure that our working sets would be much more effective to demolish the side fat.

1. Plank

2. Side Plank (R)

3. Side Plank(L)

Do 2 sets of 30 seconds each.

Now our main workout to reduce love handles

1. Wood Choppers

Instructions:

1. Stand straight with your feet shoulder-width apart or get in the position as shown above and hold a cable or resistance band with both hands
2. Rotate your torso to the right and raise the dumbbell until it’s over the right shoulder
3. Squat as you rotate your torso to the left and bring the dumbbell diagonally across the body until it’s close to your left hip
4. Repeat and then switch sides

Tip:

While doing this move make sure you really tighten up your core and try to initiate the movement from your obliques.

2. Windshield Wipers

Instructions:

1. Lie on your back with your arms straight out to the sides. Lift your legs
2. Rotate the hips to one side, without letting the legs touch the floor
3. Lift your legs and return to the starting position
4. Rotate the hips to the opposite side and repeat until set is complete

Tip:

Tighten up your core when you have to get your legs in the middle on the top. By tightening your core, your legs will automatically come up in the middle.

3. Russian Twists

Instructions:

1. Lie down with your legs bent at the knees
2. Elevate your upper body so that it creates a V shape with your thighs
3. Twist your torso to the right, and then reverse the motion, twisting it to the left
4. Repeat this movement until set is complete

Tip:

When doing this move, don't just move your hands from left to right. Try to move your entire torso to the either sides by accentuating the obliques.

4. Bicycle crunch

Instructions:

1. Lie on your back, lift your shoulders off the mat and raise both legs.
2. Bring one knee and the opposing elbow close to each other by crunching to one side, and fully extend the other leg.
3. Return to the starting position and then crunch to the opposite side.
4. Repeat until the set is complete.

Tip:

Don't just touch your elbows to the knees by moving your knees towards your elbow. Don't move your knees, what you do is you move your torso, so you twist to get your elbow to meet your knee, and then you twist your whole body to get your other elbow to the opposite knee

Do 3 -4 sets of 10-15 reps of each exercise.

CONCLUSION

Every single repetition here should be focused on the quality, not the quantity. And when you do this, guys, if you've never done this exercise before, the results that will await you in terms of deepening those obliques will be mind blowing.

So, guys, I get it. There's nothing to love about love handles, but there's a path to get rid of them. If you're persistent and with these steps here in this blog, guys, I promise you the results will be there if you put in the work.

How long does it take to lose Love Handles?

The length of time to get rid of your love handles will depend on how much fat you have to lose, what lifestyle changes you make, and how well you commit to them. It can take about four weeks of consistency to form new, healthy habits, and up to 10 weeks before they become automatic.