How to Get Rid of Love Handles: 4 Steps to Follow

Before moving towards how to get rid of love handles¹, one thing you have to do is to be patient and stop looking for quick fixes.

People waste so much time trying all these quick fixes and fat diets and all these things that tell you that you’re gonna lose this many pounds of body fat in x amount of days. People waste so much time doing that, if they had just started doing the right thing from the beginning and been patient and consistent they might have reached their goal by now.

Achieving all of your physical goals will do nothing for you if your mental health is not in check. Being active is an amazing thing not only for your body but for your mind as well. There are many benefits of having a shaped body but if you are going to be obsessing over the way that you look, you will always find something else to obsess over something to fix.

You’ll never truly be happy if you start defining yourself with how you look or whether you look like a certain person or a certain goal. So, yes you should always strive to improve yourself and be the best version of yourself and to look hella good and feel good in your skin.

How to Get Rid of Love Handles?

So let’s get straight to how to get rid of love handles and body fat.

Well, love handles and body fat are all fat. Now, you already know that you cannot spot reduce fat, and also you cannot control what part of your body you lose fat from first and you can’t control where your body stores fat first.

To lose body fat you need to be in a caloric deficit² this means you burn more calories than you consume. Losing body fat is a game of numbers, your calories should be lower than what you intake in a day. Now, it doesn’t mean that you have to burn let’s say 2000 calories a day with exercise because you ate 2000 calories a day.

Your body already burns a certain amount of calories at rest this is called your Resting Metabolic Rate or it could be also your Basal Metabolic Rate, but resting is more accurate. That’s how you are burning calories at rest. So, just by being alive by breathing your body’s burning calories to keep you alive.

First, you need to calculate your resting metabolic rate and then you add whatever calories you burn through exercise.

There are a ton of calculators to calculate your resting metabolic rate. You can check calculator.net to check your resting metabolic rate.

Just to give you an example my resting metabolic rate is around fourteen hundred calories. So, on a day that I’m sedentary and I’m doing nothing like sitting behind a computer all day that is how much I burn.

To burn fat or be in a calorie deficit what can be the things that you can do, let’s check them out one by one.

1. Exercise to Lose Fat

Step one, we have got exercise. So, exercise is probably the easiest way for a lot of people to increase their caloric burn and get into a calorie deficit.

For this, it is recommended to pick high-intensity workouts³ that burn the most calories in the smallest amount of time. So, hit cardio workouts, etc. can help a lot in reducing body fat.

1.1 Weight Traning to Loose Body Fat

First of all, maintaining your strength is super important even if you’re trying to get rid of fat. Second of all, weight training or resistance training burns calories as well and adds variety to your workouts, and having more muscle mass helps increase your resting metabolic rate because your body has to work harder to like keep you alive when you have more muscle. So, increasing your muscle mass is also a great way of increasing your natural daily calorie burn.

1.2 Walking

You should utilize walking, so many people underestimate how many calories walking burns like a nice good walk and it doesn’t even have to be a speed walk just put on your favorite audiobook or favorite podcast and take a stroll.

Walking every single day has so many health benefits aside from burning calories, but if you are new to working out you don’t want high-impact workouts. This is the easiest and most natural way if you make walking part of your routine. It’s a game-changer.

1.3 Abs Workout

Should we still be doing Abs workouts for love handles and body fat?

So, yes the abs workouts ⁴alone are not going to burn a lot of fat because most of the time abs workouts don’t burn a lot of calories but abs workouts do build up strength in your core muscles. They help define your midsection and they help kind offering your abs out so that when you lose fat you’ve got a little bit of definition here. Some people think that the Abs workout is a fat-loss workout, however, it is not 100%.

Core strength is also important for your health overall. It helps with your posture, and it helps in a lot of exercises like squats deadlifts whatever so you should still train your core, but you don’t have to be working on your abs every single day. Two to three times a week just to keep your core strength good, but to focus more on workouts that burn lots of calories and strength training.

2. Diet for Removing Excess Fat

So, in step number two let’s talk about diet because the diet is very important.

You would hear people say abs are made in the kitchen, but technically they are not. Abs are made with workouts but abs are revealed in the kitchen because in order to see your abs and to have a more toned midsection like you have to shed the fat that’s your belly and make sure that you’re eating is clean.

Try to avoid processed foods as it contains a lot of calories that can make you distract from your goal of losing weight. Cutting food that contains a high amount of sugar can help reduce body fat.

It is pretty much true that portion sizes matter so much, yes what you eat is important because you want to make sure you’re getting nutritious foods that make you feel happy and energized, and full but portion sizes can make or break your diet.

A lot of people like to say just listen to your body, stop eating when you’re full. The issue is a lot of people don’t know how to listen to their bodies. We don’t know how to stop eating when we’re full. However, it is not necessary to have a strict diet for weight loss but still losing weight requires some level of attention towards eating habits.

But what are the best ways to minimize the calories that people ingest every single day so that they can be in a calorie deficit but still feel energized and happy and full?

Here are the best ways for a perfect diet plan to reduce excess fat.

2.1. Nutrient-Rich Healthy Diet

Focusing on eating very nutrient-dense foods that have a lower caloric density. For example, you can have some greens with every single meal. Salads are awesome and there are so many recipes you can make with salads. You can also go on Pinterest to get inspired and find more recipes. Salads are a great way to just get a lot of greens in and make you feel really full with a lot fewer calories and get lots of protein.

2.2 Protein and Healthy Fats

Protein is great not only for your muscles to help build and refuel your muscles, but protein keeps you feeling so full.

Hard-boiled eggs, salmon, chicken pork chops, and beans are some good sources of protein and a healthy diet. On days when you feel like you are not getting enough protein in or you are looking for a high-protein snack, you can have a protein shake. This shake will keep you feeling super full and it is only 120 calories. You can make it with almond milk making it 180 calories and 24 grams of protein.

Protein is a super important thing when you are trying to get rid of love handles or belly fat. It can really fast the process of reducing the fat from the body and can keep you energized and feel happy.

A lot of people think that being fat will make you really fat, but that’s not true. Your body needs healthy fat to run and to be in a healthy state. There are many good sources of healthy fats like peanuts. But don’t eat excess healthy fats as they have high calories.

2.3 Carbohydrates

Carbs, you need to eat your carbs do not skimp out on crabs.

You need carbs as it is where your body gets its energy from like if you want to perform the best in your workouts if you just want to feel happy and energized you need carbs. A lot of people think carbs make them fat, they don’t but I do think that carbs have a bad reputation because they are addicting. So, carbs are very hard to stop eating.

They don’t make you feel super full like proteins and healthy fats. It is very easy to overeat carbs more so than protein or something else and when I say carbs for this scenario I mean pasta, rice, cookies, etc.

So, have your pasta, have your rice, and you’ll be fine just wash your portions. A good kind of rule of thumb is to try to get some protein in every single meal because if you just eat a big-ass plate of pasta like it’s going to be hard to stop, but if you add some salmon to that, someone will help you kind of stay fuller.

3. Reduce Alcohol Intake to Lose Weight

The next thing is to reduce alcohol intake. As you all know, drinking too much alcohol slowly damages your liver, increases visceral fat, and reduces your ability to work. Because of this, it cannot metabolize fat and the amount of fat in your body starts increasing causing excess body fat. Especially around your middle sections, and this is the reason why your love handles turn out and the body fat increases.

Many types of alcohol like wine, and beer contain such a high amount of calories, that you have seen those who consume alcohol, whose stomachs are protruding. And with drinking alcohol, people eat so much unnecessary food because of that their weight starts increasing. So if you want to reduce your love handles, then minimize the consumption of alcohol. And I will suggest that you should completely avoid it.

4. Vacuum

So now, let’s hop into the topic of vacuums, and no, I don’t mean the kind that you do around your house. But I’m talking about the vacuum exercise.

Vacuums are a great way to cinch your midsection and improve the overall look of your belly. Now vacuums are not going to burn the fat that is on your belly or in your love handles, but they will improve the appearance of your waist by making it smaller. So, vacuums target the transverse abdominis, which is a real muscle that acts as your body’s natural corset.

Strengthening this muscle will not only make your waist smaller, but it also has a lot of other benefits like helping with lower back pain with posture and helping with explosive exercises like deadlifts, jumping, squats, etc.

If you don’t know how to do them and it’s your first time hearing about them highly recommend watching this video.

Always check with your doctor to make sure you can do it because I believe if you have like a herniated disc or something crazy you shouldn’t be doing that. So, if it feels weird or painful you should stop and check with your doctor to make sure you’re all okay to go there.

The Takeaway

So, let’s summarize this into five concrete steps that you can take today to help minimize your love handles and your body fat.

1. Take a 30-minute walk every single day. Walking can be a game changer if you are considering weight loss.
2. Eat a big bowl of salad every single day, don’t overthink it just get a bunch of veggies for yourself.
3. Protein, make sure you get a good amount of protein each day whether it’s from a protein shake or getting from natural protein sources. This will help you feel full and more satisfied.
4. Reduce alcohol consumption.

Additional Note:-Have a good sleep for yourself. Try to get at least 6-7 hours of sleep to get your body to recover.

For a perfect diet plan check out A Perfect 7 Days Diet Plan to Reduce Excess Body Fat.

1. Golden, Nicole. “How to Get Rid of Love Handles: Dispelling Body Fat Myths.” ↩︎
2. Cereda, Emanuele, et al. “Early caloric deficit is associated with a higher risk of death in invasive ventilated COVID-19 patients.” Clinical Nutrition 41.12 (2022): 3096-3099. ↩︎
3. Lewis-McCormick, Irene. The HIIT Advantage: High-intensity Workouts for Women. Human Kinetics, 2015. ↩︎
4. Seabourne, Tom. Your Best Abs: Revolutionary Core Workouts for a Stronger, Flatter Stomach. Meyer & Meyer Sport, 2018. ↩︎

Last Updated on August 2, 2024 by Sathi