When I Googled the phrase “how to lose your love handles,” I was literally amazed at the number of sites claiming that most effective way to lose love handles is to do a bunch of exercises for your waist, like side bends, twists with a broom and so on.
Welcome to 1985.
Forgive me for being so blunt, but this is the biggest pile of crap I’ve seen in a long time.
If you want to get rid of your love handles, exercises like twists and side bends are going to make almost no difference at all.
It’s true that some of these exercises will work the muscles that sit UNDERNEATH your love handles.
But that isn’t going to get rid of the fat that’s covering them up.
Research published in the Journal of Applied Physiology looked at a group of women taking part in a military physical training program. The women exercised for 90 minutes five days a week over the course of six months.
The women were doing a LOT of exercises for their legs — running, squats, leg curls, and so on.
If doing hundreds of exercises for a particular body part was the best way to tone up that area, the women should have lost most of the fat from their thighs.
But they didn’t. In fact, despite all the leg exercises they did, they lost zero fat from their legs.
Please don’t waste your time trying to trim the inches from your love handles by twisting them away.
The idea that to lose your love handles, you need to eat 5-6 small meals a day to “keep your body fueled and stoke your metabolism” is another myth that seems to pop up from time to time.
Again, more nonsense.
This is nothing more than the “stock answer” given to people who want to lose fat from any area of the body, be it from around their waist or anywhere else.
The idea that eating little and often helps you burn fat faster is a myth that has been debunked so many times by so many different researchers, it surprises me that people still believe it.
The most recent study I came across, published in the British Journal of Nutrition, compared 3 versus 6 meals a day, and concludes that “increasing meal frequency does not promote greater body weight loss.”
“There were no significant differences between the low- and high-meal frequency groups for adiposity indices, appetite measurements or gut peptides (peptide YY and ghrelin) either before or after the intervention. We conclude that increasing meal frequency does not promote greater body weight loss under the conditions described in the present study.”
In fact, research going back to the 1990′s — nearly 20 years ago — shows no difference in weight loss with 3 or 6 meals a day.
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About The Author
My name is Christian Finn. I run a private "members only" website that will help you burn fat, build muscle and get strong. If you want accurate, honest and in-depth reviews on the latest "hot topics" in the world of fitness, you're confused by all the conflicting advice out there, or you just want some fat-burning and muscle-building training routines that work, click here now to find out how I can help you.
