- 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. - 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. - Drink more water
Water helps increase your metabolism and flush toxins from your body. Aim for 2-3litres a day. - 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. - 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.
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.
Hold a DB in each hand.
Laterally bend your torso to the side and then repeat to the other side.
Return to starting position.
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.
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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