Despite its cute name, love handles are not something cute we’d want to add to your body. Actually, it’s the other way around! Love handles are the excess fat resting at the side of your waists. People find it frustrating when it sits over the pant’s top or gets exposed with tight clothes. If you’re one of those people, you must have been thinking about love handles weight loss.
So, do love handles really go away with weight loss?
Love handles are excess fats. Since weight loss differs from fat loss, you cannot mainly rely on it. You will need to lose excess fat to get rid of your love handles. A “muffin top” is caused by various factors that you might be overlooking. Hence, even if you’re determined with your workout routines, you can still have this excess fat.
If you’re passionate about getting rid of your love handles, this article can help you! We’ll be explaining in detail what love handles are and what causes them. You will discover if they diminish with weight loss. Furthermore, we will give you scientific-based tips on how to get rid of these stubborn love handles.
Do Love Handles Go Away With Weight Loss?
Love handles are parts of your skin that hang above your hips due to excess fat. They usually become more noticeable when you wear tight clothes. While this sounds frustrating, the worst-case scenario could be an increase of risk to chronic health problems like:
- Stroke;
- Breathing problems;
- Cardiovascular disease;
- Liver disease;
- Osteoarthritis;
- Sleep apnea;
- High blood pressure;
- Type 2 diabetes; and
- Certain types of cancer, such as breast and colon.
Many people think wearing tight clothes causes love handles. While it makes them more pronounced, these types of clothing don’t really bring about love handles. The main causes of love handles are:
- Cortisol. This is the stress hormone your body produces that makes you overeat and gain weight. When you’re stressed, your body generates high levels of this hormone, resulting in Cushing syndrome. This health problem causes the love handles.
- Genes. If you’re doing everything to get rid of love handles without any luck, maybe your genes hinder you from achieving it.
- Age. With age comes a shift in the body’s fat distribution. As we get old, our fat stays in the belly, making the stubborn love handles.
- Diet. Since love handles are excess fat, your diet could also be the culprit. If you’re eating fatty foods and sugary drinks, you gain belly fat and love handles.
- Excessive alcohol intake. If you drink too much, your body will spend more time processing alcohol than fat. Hence, the fat will just accumulate in your belly and produce love handles.
- Lack of Sleep. Sleep deprivation can result in various health problems, such as weight gain and even obesity. Like stress, this also increases cortisol production in the body.
- Lack of Exercise. If you partner an unhealthy diet with a lack of exercise, the fat and calories will not burn. Hence, these will only turn into love handles.
- Hypothyroidism. This is one of the many undiagnosed conditions that decelerate your metabolism. With this condition, your fat-burning process slows down and creates love handles.
However, you can still have this excess fat even if you are exercising regularly. That is because exercise may help you lose weight, yet it doesn’t necessarily mean you lose belly fat. The term “skinny fat” represents the high body fat percentage despite having a slim figure. Some people can regularly work out and still remain skinny fat.
While this is the case, it’s still better to exercise than do nothing at all. It will allow you to burn calories and reduce the chance of accumulating love handles. Furthermore, your action towards getting rid of love handles should be focused on losing excess fat, not weight.
How To Get Rid of Stubborn Love Handles?
Indeed, love handles will remain stubborn if you don’t address them with the right things. Many people attempt to cure this area by doing side crunches and other abdominal exercises. While it could help, these are not the most effective way to get rid of love handles. If your regular exercises and diet don’t help you get rid of it, try this list we made for you!
1. Eat Cleaner
Eat more whole, unprocessed foods. Eating processed foods adds unnecessary fats and calories to your body. Also, it could lead to obesity and other chronic diseases. Many studies have concluded that people who eat ready-made meals gain more belly fat than those who do not. Hence, whole and cleaner foods are the keys to belly fat loss.
Consolidating whole cleaner foods into your eating plan is a great way to contract your waistline. These foods are vegetables, seeds, organic goods, nuts, whole grains, and lean proteins. Preparing meals at home, instead of picking pre-made dishes, might be another extraordinary method to lose love handles.
Also, adding food varieties wealthy in soluble fiber to your diet may help dispose of love handles. The delayed sensations of fullness fiber brings have shown to diminish the number of calories, prompting weight reduction. Furthermore, cleaner foods that are wealthy in soluble fiber are typically likewise loaded with nutrients.
2. Learn About Macronutrients
Macronutrients should be the foundation of your diet. These are protein, fat, and carbohydrates you allow your body to take. What’s more, they provide the energy your body needs to maintain its system and structure. Calculating your macro intake can make a significant impact on your body. Therefore, you should learn more about macronutrients.
- Carbohydrates serve as primary body fuel that supplies energy to your muscles and the central nervous system when moving.
- Proteins take part in our body’s hormonal, metabolic, and enzyme systems.
- Fat is necessary for energy conservation needed for insulation and protection of our organs. While fat is necessary, only the healthy ones should be eaten.
Adding protein-rich foods to your meal keeps you full for a longer period. It keeps you from having the urge to take a snack, such as high-calorie junk foods. These high-quality proteins are eggs, legumes, seeds, nuts, seafood, meats, and poultry.
Many scientific studies have proven that protein-rich foods work best at reducing belly fat. Healthy fats include fatty fish, olive oil, avocados, seed, and nuts. These are the fats that could, in fact, help you achieve a slim waistline.
3. Cut Back on Sugar
The best way to eat clean is to cut back on sugar. It does not necessarily mean that you shouldn’t eat any sugar. It is still necessary to your diet. Cutting back on sugar is consuming less food with added sugar such as candies, cookies, sodas, and sports drinks.
Honey, table sugar, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), and agave nectar contain a straightforward sugar called fructose. Numerous researches have shown that fructose, particularly from improved refreshments, causes an expansion in belly fat.
Furthermore, most sweet food varieties are stacked with calories yet contain insufficient nutrients. Scaling back the measure of added sugar in your eating routine can lessen the muscle to fat ratio, including love handles. So, if you have a sweet tooth, whole fruits are the perfect alternative. Not only will it satisfy your sweet tooth, but it also supplies you with vitamins.
4. Do Strength Training
Include strength training in your workout and perform it a few days every week to invigorate muscle mass. Your goal must be to gain lean muscle and lose excess fat. Don’t just focus on ab exercises to get rid of your love handles. Work on your entire body such as your arms, hips, chest, legs, and back.
Utilize weights or your body weight for resistance. Also, weightlifting equipment and exercise bands work the same way. Finish eight to twelve reps for every set with an adequately provoking weight to exhaust your muscles.
Other exercises that can improve your strength are bicycle crunches, planks, slide plank dips, deadlifts, and hanging leg raises. For a less intense workout, you can try Russian twists, mountain climbers, kettlebell swings, burpees, and bird dogs.
5. Manage Stress Levels
As we have mentioned above, stress produces high cortisol levels in your body that urge you to eat. Stress is a normal body reaction. But prolonged stress could have adverse effects such as headache, anxiety, and digestive problems. These consequences could further result in weight gain, and eventually love handles.
The best thing to manage stress is to do stimulating activities, such as yoga and meditation. You can also do household chores while listening to music to increase movements throughout the day. By simply doing these things, you can promote and speed up love handles fat loss.
6. Get Better Sleep
Like stress, sleep deprivation also stimulates cortisol production. Studies revealed that people who lack sleep gain more bodyweight than those who have enough sleep. In the same manner, lack of sleep can also cause serious health problems like obesity and diabetes.
Considering these things, we suggest you make sure to have 8 hours of sleep every night. It is also important that you sleep on time. Having enough sleep provides you more energy to consume on the next day. Hence, you will have more strength to burn fat and get rid of the love handles.
7. Do Some Cardio
Cardiovascular or vigorous exercise is characterized as any action that raises your pulse for an all-encompassing timeframe. Vigorous exercises help consume calories and lessen excess fat on the body, stimulating love handles weight loss.
Numerous individuals feel discouraged by high-intensity cardio workouts, such as running. You shouldn’t force yourself to do it—don’t be so hard on yourself! While you feel frustrated about getting rid of your love handles, it shouldn’t push you to your limit or demotivate you.
Nonetheless, there are a lot of low-sway, fledgling vigorous exercises that are not difficult to do. Swimming, working out on a treadmill, or essentially taking a lively walk are magnificent approaches to adding cardio to your routine.
8. Drink More Water
Regardless of your goal, you should drink plenty of water daily to keep your body hydrated. For muffin top weight loss, water is necessary to boost your metabolism and burn fats. Furthermore, drinking more water allows your body to sweat and release toxins.
Instead of drinking sweetened beverages that make you gain weight, drinking water is the best way to maintain optimal health. Also, various studies have proven that drinking water makes you feel less thirsty and hungry. Hence, it is necessary for belly fat loss.
9. Stop Overeating
Overeating is often linked to stress. Hence, if you can’t keep yourself from facing your daily stressors, you could at least stop resorting to overeating. Concentrating on your food and focusing more on how you feel while eating can help you shed pounds from your waist.
Mindful eating can help you deal with your dietary patterns to shed a few calories. Also, it includes focusing on hunger and completion prompts and eating gradually without interruption. Furthermore, it is important to know what food supports your temperament and wellbeing.
This is a great method to get better, both genuinely and intellectually, and has been demonstrated to be an effective technique for weight reduction. Additionally, practicing this can help you maintain a healthy weight until you’ve arrived at your goal.
Conclusion
Love handles not only affects our physical appearance, but also increases our risk of having various chronic diseases. Many factors cause love handles. Even though you exercise regularly, weight loss does not equate to fat loss. So, you should focus more on burning excess fat. We hope our tips can help you. All you have to do is practice and you sure will have a successful love handles weight loss.
So helpful. Thanks for sharing