Article Surfing Archive

Let me show you how to get rid of love handles

A "girl with love handles", what a nice thought. The phrase conjures up an image of a warm cuddly person with a personality to match. She has all the curves in the right place and just screams out for a hug. The love handles would be the first thing to grab on to.

Love handles unfortunately do have a tendency to turn from cuddly into unsightly and unattractive very quickly if you don't do something to stop them advancing. They will also make you heavier and will force you to carry the weight around with you wherever you go. This puts an extra strain on your heart that you could do without and it certainly isn't good for your overall health generally. Men get love handles as well as women and in my opinion it looks a lot worse.

Wondering what love handle fat is?

Before you start on a plan to eliminate love handles you need to understand what they are made of. Quite simply, they're fat, fat that your body has produced and stored as a result of eating more calories than you burn off with exercise. Love handle fat, and fat elsewhere in your body is how your body stores energy until it's needed.

In the past your ancestors were lucky if they found food every few days and they had no way of storing it in those days. If your hunting party were successful you would have to eat the whole lot in one go while it was fresh. To keep you alive until the next meal came along the excess energy in the feast was converted to fat and stored in the body where it would be gradually released over the next few days when you didn't eat.

Your body hasn't forgotten how to store food and it can't predict when the next meal is going to arrive so it stores the energy for you in the form of fat. You probably eat far more regularly than your Stone Age ancestors did so you need to be very careful that you use up your fat store or better still, don't allow it to build up in the first place.

So your love handles are made up of fat rolls that cover the muscle on your waistline. They hang like handles over your clothes, which is where they get their lovely name.

You must exercise to get rid of love handles

Losing love handle fat is a matter of losing fat all over your body. You can't tell your body to lose fat in any specific place even if you exercise all the muscles in that area. What you will do is strengthen and build the muscle underneath the fat but the fat will still be there. Losing fat can be accomplished using a combination of good nutrition and regular exercise to make sure that you burn off more calories than you consume.

Don't just put yourself on a starvation diet to reduce your calories below the rate at which you burn them. If you do that you risk burning not only fat but also lean muscle and other body organs. Your metabolism will slow and your appetite will increase which will make it very difficult for you to stay slim. You must balance your energy intake with regular exercise and you must keep up the exercise so try to take up something you enjoy doing. Increasing exercise while paying attention to good nutrition will allow you to burn fat while building your muscle.

Watching the types of food that you eat as well as how much can be a big part of the solution how to get rid of love handles.