Want that excess fat sitting around your waist and above your hips to one day go away?
Let’s be clear, it’s not going away on its own. Although, it can bloat more. So, how to stop it?
Table of Contents
We’ll have to explore the problem from its identification to its causes before we get to forming plausible solutions. Therefore, let’s begin by looking at what love handles are and how men can get rid of love handles.
How Do You Get Love Handles?
This excess fat is referred to as love handles and they are a problem for men as well as women.
The reasons for getting love handles are no different than the reasons for getting fat around your waist.
Since it’s all fat accumulation, you have to adopt a lifestyle that involves burning more calories than you consume on a daily basis.
In addition to this, you will also have to ensure that what you eat and what you take in is not just healthy but also helps you burn more.
It’s a rule of thumb that you will accumulate more fat in your body if you are not focusing on achieving a calorie deficit.
The best and easiest way to understand this is to imagine your body as a closed system that has an input, a storage and processing unit, and an output.
The input is your food, or what you put in your body.
This can either be good and healthy food that provides nutritional value without calories and carbs or it can be bad and cause fat accumulation and obesity.
The storage is your body (gut, hips, abdomen, thighs, belly, love handles, etc.) and the processing unit is your body’s metabolism.
Finally, we have the output, i.e. the work done by the body that ultimately helps burn calories.
If there is no work done by the body, there are no calories burnt.
These calories are, therefore, stored in the body as fat and start to accumulate in different areas.
Now, we know that we can’t change our metabolism directly. We can only change our input and outputs, i.e. diet and exercise routines.
How to Get Rid of Love Handles for Men?
Love handles or love handles fat also extend outward from the hips, and this makes it impossible to look good in some (but not all) of men’s workout shorts and other tight apparel.
It’s not that you can’t get rid of your love handles. It’s more about whether you’re ready to make the necessary changes.
Right off the bat, here’s an overview of what you’re going to have to do:
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Incorporate healthy foods that provide essential nutrients without fats
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Work out on a regular basis with exercises to lose love handles fast
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Follow a regimen with dedication
Diet to Lose Love Handles for Males
As explained above, you will need to adopt certain eating habits that will involve replacing unhealthy snacks, sugar drinks and other items that induce fat.
There are five things that are essential to every healthy diet plan:
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It has high amounts of protein
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It has high amounts of fiber
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It has high amounts of healthy carbs (these carbs include fiber)
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It prohibits sugar (especially added sugar) while encouraging natural alternatives (e.g. fruits, vegetables, etc.)
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It prohibits processed foods
You can take help from our diet guide to lose belly fat to come up with a plan of your own. However, we strongly advise that you consult dieticians and nutritionists to ensure that you’re not making a mistake.
Exercises to Get Rid of Love Handles for Every Man
Your body’s output is crucial in ensuring that you’re ending each day with a calorie deficit, i.e., that you’ve burnt more calories than you consumed.
As we explained, your body’s storage will bloat with an excess of calories and this will eventually become the fat that you want to get rid of.
Therefore, working out is important because this is the only way you can burn more calories than you consume.
You can reduce your intake but you have to make sure that you’re burning not just the fat that’s entered your body today, but also the fat that has accumulated or hardened over time.
Although spot reduction doesn’t work, you can still try to target your abdominal area to satisfy that urge as long as your workout intensity and duration aren’t affected.
Just make sure that you’re doing enough of everything to target most of your body as well. You’ll eventually start to get rid of love handles if you follow the workouts below regularly.
It’s best to have a weekly plan that comprises two or alternative days for full-body workouts.
These exercises for love handles men are good examples of the workout you can look forward to:
For more details on the ultimate workouts, click here.
Cardio Exercises
Cardio workouts are essential in any weight loss plan. These exercises aim to raise our heart rate for an extended duration.
This accelerates the pumping of the blood as well as breathing. That is why these are also called aerobic exercises.
When we breathe excessively, we burn love handles, calories and carbs inside to produce the energy needed to compensate for it.
Once we run out of calories and carbs that we’ve eaten for the day, we can lose the fat that’s accumulated in our hips or abdomen.
This means you can use cardio exercises for removing love handles.
Mixing HIIT
High-Intensity Interval Training is becoming the norm and quite rightly so.
This exciting variation to bland workout routines has appealed to amateur as well as professional athletes and fitness geeks around the world.
Particularly beneficial for belly fat reduction, mixing HIIT with your regimen can help you get rid of love handles fast.
The idea behind HIIT is to accelerate the production of the human growth hormone which helps in burning more calories during workouts as well as in rest.
And HIIT helps our body produce this hormone at a rate that’s 450% times more than normal cardio exercises.
Takeaway
Love handles in men are caused by fat accumulation.
The only way men can get rid of love handles is by dieting and working out.
Adopting a healthy, calorie and carb-burning diet along with exercises to get rid of love handles are your only resort.