Why Do I Have So Much Love Handles?
The underlying cause of love handles is fat retention. Generally speaking, fat cells accumulate when your body takes in too many calories or you donât burn as many calories as youâre consuming. Over time, these fat cells can become noticeable as they accumulate in certain areas, such as around your waist and hips.
Why do I have love handles? The underlying cause of love handles is fat retention. Fat cells accumulate when your body consumes too many calories or you do not burn as many calories as you consume.
âHealthyâ Foods That Cause Belly Fat
- Carbs Carbs Carbs.
- Margarine (Trans Fats) I remember vividly when I was a kid my Mom buying margarine because we all thought it was healthier than butter.
- Fruit Juice (Fructose) Itâs a shame how so many people believe drinking lots of fruit juice is good for them.
- Saturated Fats.
The love handle area is the most common place where men store fat. They are also one of the most stubborn areas to lose body fat. Getting your nutrition right is the first step to get rid of love handles, because abs exercises donât burn fat and cardio workouts donât burn enough fat to make up for too much unhealthy food.
The #1 Best Exercise for Reducing Love Handles, Says Science
- Planks. Planks are simple but very effective.
- Mountain climbers. These aren’t for the faint of heart, but just a few consecutive minutes (or less) spent performing vigorous mountain climbers is a great way to blast your abdominal
- Bicycle Crunches.
- Russian Twists.
Probably the most effective exercise to lose love handles is Russian twists. Just sit with your legs stretched in front of your and arms joined ahead of you. Now lift up your legs so that they are not touching the ground. Now twist your torso from side to side along with your hands, without letting your feet touch the ground.
What is love handles?
What are love handles? âLove handlesâ are areas of skin that extend outward from the hips. When combined with tight clothing, love handles can become more pronounced, but they arenât caused by tight clothes alone. They indicate excess fat accumulation around the hips and abdominal area. Learn more about the causes of love handles …
Twist your torso to the right, bringing your clasped hands or your weight to the right side of your body. Twist to the left, touching the weight or your hands to the left side of your body. Repeat for 30 seconds to a minute.
This exercise not only targets the lower back, itâs also great for your glutes: Start by lying on your back with your knees bent, your arms at your sides, and your palms flat against the floor. Slowly lift your butt and lower back off the floor to create a straight line from your knees to your shoulders.
Trusted Source. per day. Not only does this reduce your risk for hypertension, but it can also help prevent fluid retention that can make love handles worse. Aside from changing your body from the inside, you can also help camouflage the appearance of love handles from the outside.
Love handles can be a side effect of excess body fat, especially fat in the area of your hips and lower abdomen. Increased activity and healthier eating can contribute to shrinking love handles as part of overall fat loss, but itâs important to remember that this can also take some time.
Why are love handles so hard to firm up?
The love handles in particular are problematic because the muscles under themâyour obliquesâare thin , so they wonât bulk up , explains Westcott.
The disadvantage? Once love handles appear, biology makes them tough to ditch. âYou lose fat in the reverse order that you deposit it,â says Westcott. âAnd typically for men, the last place they lose fat would be that midsection areaâthe first place they put it on.â
What gives? If you think about fat storage from an evolutionary standpoint, it could be that we put fat on in our midsection first because itâs easily accessible energy your body could grab if it was fasting or faced with a shortage of food. So when you aim to lose fat, your body first removes it from arguably âless essentialâ areas like the face, Westcott says.
Love handlesâtho se pockets of excess fat over the lower sides of your torsoâarenât exactly easy to, well, handle. In fact, even devoted gym-goers often struggle to shed these seemingly omnipresent pockets of fat, no matter how many workouts they do.
But fear not: Though love handles may be stubborn, they arenât invincible. Hereâs what you need to know about defeating this common foe.
What is the best exercise to get rid of love handles?
One of the most popular core exercises, plank, is a must-do if you want to get rid of love handles. It is an isometric exercise that doesnât require any additional equipment. There also is a great number of variations of this exercise, so you are sure to find the one that would work the best for you.
Use that momentum to stand and swing the kettlebell out in front of your body, up to shoulder height. Thrust your hips forward, and engage your glutes and core as you stand up straight. When the kettlebell hits shoulder height, your knees should be straight, and glutes contracted in a full hip extension.
As seen above, love handles can be considered subcutaneous fat, however, an expanding waistline (love handles included) is a sign of visceral fat (12).
What causes love handles?
1. Excess Body Fat. The first thing that may be causing your love handles is excess body fat. If you have a body fat percentage of over letâs say 25-26% and you just started your workout program and diet about a month or two ago and itâs not going away yet, just give it time. The way to get rid of those love handles is the good old diet+exercise.
The way to get rid of those love handles is the good old diet+exercise. Youâve been accumulating these toxins and body fat for years, so itâs gonna take a little bit of time to get your body back to normal. In the meantime you need to be patient, keep going and keep doing your lean diet and your workout. 2. Estrogen Dominance.
But estrogen dominance could very well be the cause of your love handles.