How to get rid of love handles for a lean and athletic body
Plagued by stubborn body fat that sits around your lower back? How to get rid of love handles is a question many men ask, but very few ever find the answer they so desperately want. But if you’re determined to get rid of your love handles, once and for all, then put into practice my expert fat-loss advice to finally get the lean, strong and fit body you’ve always wanted, says New Body Plan’s Joe Warner
“Love handles” makes them sound like such a nice thing to have. But storing too much fat around your sides and lower back is a problem for a lot of men. Even if you can’t see it when you’re standing in front of the mirror, you always know it’s there.
It stops nice clothes from fitting well. It can make you self-conscious at the park, beach, swimming pool, or in the gym changing rooms.
But help is at hand! Here’s what you can do if you’re troubled by love handles and want to lose back fat fast!
To find your perfect plan, take the New Body quiz!
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Can I spot-reduce fat?
Many people want to prioritise reducing body fat from specific parts of their body. For men, it’s usually fat from the chest (the misery-causing man boobs) or from around their stomach (the dreaded beer belly). Or it might be from around their sides (the loathsome love handles) or from their lower back. But trying to lose fat from a specific site isn’t the best approach.
Why? The theory of “spot reducing” fat, where certain exercises, ways of eating, or lifestyle choices can eliminate body fat from specific body parts, has been debunked.
Where on our bodies we store fat is largely determined by our hormones.
It’s why women tend to store fat around their thighs, hips, and bum. And why men gain weight around their bellies before anywhere else. (Increasing your testosterone level, the primary male sex hormone can help you lose back fat, especially if you have high levels of the female sex hormone oestrogen.)
Just as you can’t “instruct” your body to store fat, you also can’t tell it from where you want to lose it from first. But that’s not to say you can’t still make major changes to your body. It’s possible to very quickly lose back fat – and strip off excess fat from everywhere else too – to look and feel like a brand new man.
Imagine your friends, family and colleagues doing a double-take when you walk into the room – because that’s what’s going to happen!
How to get rid of back fat
To lose back fat you need to start burning more calories per day than you consume. It’s as simple as that! Here’s how to work out how many calories you need per day to lose weight or gain muscle.
However, most people decide to dramatically cut down their intake of food to create the “calorie deficit” needed to burn fat. That’s a a big mistake. Low-calorie diets are dangerous. They result in low energy, bad moods, poor sleep and weight gain. A far smarter strategy is to first increase your daily calorie expenditure through moving more.
After all, the more energy you burn through exercise, the less the pressure on your diet to end each day having used more calories than you ate! Take a daily walk, always use the stairs and never sit still at your desk or on the sofa for too long. Offer to make everyone tea and coffee. Do anything that means you’re moving rather than being sedentary is going to require energy. And the more you move the more calories you burn.
The best back and bicep workout to add muscle size and strength
The best exercises to get rid of love handles
One of the very best ways to increase your daily energy expenditure is through exercise. But jogging for hours on end isn’t your best option.
Research has proved the best approach to lose back fat is by lifting weights. Multi-joint moves, such as the barbell squat, deadlift, overhead shoulder press and bench press are best. These lifts turn your body into a calorie-torching machine for up to 48 hours after your session.
Throw in some short bursts of intense cardio (better known as high-intensity interval training or HIIT) and you’ll smash it.
This weights-plus-HIIT approach is the basis for our best-selling training programme New Body Plan. It’s already helped thousands of ordinary men get extraordinary results and burn off their bellies and shift stubborn back fat to turn their lives around.
It was also the fat-loss programme that enabled Jon Lipsey to burn 10kg of body fat in just eight weeks and end up on the cover of Men’s Fitness magazine – so we know it works if you’re serious about getting back into shape!
How to eat to get rid of love handles
If someone tells you there is only way to eat for fat loss, stop listening to them at once. The truth is there are many ways to skin a cat. And there are many nutritional approaches that can help you lose excess body fat.
You may have heard of Intermittent Fasting (IF), where you go for extended periods of the day (typically 16 hours), then eat during the other eight hours. There’s Paleo, where you eat like your human ancestors did 10,000 years ago (mainly meat, fish, nuts, veg and fruit, and no dairy, grains or alcohol), Atkins (a low-carb approach), or Keto (an even stricter no-carb strategy where dietary fats can be eaten with free abandon).
While very different dietary plans, all the nutrition approaches listed above (and every other one you’ve ever heard of) have two things in common. They are designed to lower your daily calorie intake below the number needed to maintain your weight. So you start to lose weight as your body starts burning fat stores to make up for the energy deficit.
The other common feature these diets share is that they’re incredibly hard to stick to for more than a few days or weeks. How long do you think you could last without eating a single slice of bread? Or having a scoop of ice cream? Or even a cold beer at the end of a long week?
And that’s the problem: as soon as a dietary strategy completely restricts certain foods or food groups it majors them almost impossible to adhere to for long enough so you get the fat-loss result you want.
That’s what we created a brand new eating approach: it’s called 90% Nutrition and it’s helped thousands of guys finally get the body they want. The diet – and it’s not a diet at all, but a simple, smart and sustainable way of eating for greater health and happiness – is based on the concept of eating well for 90% of the time, then having whatever you want the remaining 10% of the time. It’s easy to follow and it gets results! Here’s what else you need to know to start eating for a leaner body today!
To find your perfect plan, take the New Body quiz!
Take the New Body quiz!
Burn fat and lose your belly with the best cardio for weight loss