The #1 Method to Lose Love Handles (FOR GOOD!)

Love handles are one of the toughest areas to get rid of, but losing them is actually quite simple fatality. And no, you don't need to starve yourself. Using the latest science, I'll show you five easy steps that I guarantee will get rid of them and keep them off for good. But first, you need to understand how you develop your love handles to begin with. And the cold hard truth is from overeating, not from one night, but from several months or even years of eating more calories than your body needs. And guess what? Our bodies prefer to store excess calories as fat around the abdomen. This is especially true for men as well as women after menopause. And to make matters worse, usually wherever the body stores fat first is where it will lose fat from last. This is what makes belly fat, lower back fat, and love handles so easy to gain, yet so tough to lose. These areas build up slowly over time without you really noticing, and then can seem almost impossible to lose no matter what you try. But don't worry, love fennels are just like any other fat. Use the right approach and eventually they will go away. But this starts with the most important step. Nutrition. Now, you've probably heard that you need to be in a deficit to lose fat, right? Well, while a calorie deficit is key, it's not actually going to cause much fat loss in your love handles right away. Your body will prioritize other areas of your body, like the fat around your face, shoulders, chest and arms, before it prioritizes stubborn areas like your love handles. One of our Build science members, Archie, is a perfect example of this. In the first few months, although his belly and love handles didn't change much, if you look closely, you'll notice improvements in his face, chest, shoulders and upper stomach. It wasn't until after this point did he finally start to see some progress in his love handles, and he simply had to keep going until they eventually came off. This is why you must use a calorie deficit that isn't too aggressive, something you can stick to consistently month after month without feeling like you're about to drop dead. Most people try to rush it, and while they may see some initial results, they can't stick to their diet for long enough for fat loss to reach their lovehounds. Or as soon as they do, they gain it all back again instead. For most people, a good general target is to aim to lose about a pound of fat a week, which means you'll need to eat around 500 calories less than your body burns every day. But don't be afraid to take it even slower than this if you need to. In fact, if you head to builtwithscience.com calculator can input your stats and it'll tell you roughly how many calories you should eat to lose fat. But it'll also give you a slower option that'll be easier to follow. Now the next steps I'm about to show you can definitely speed this process up. But just remember, you're not in a rush. It took years for your love handles to build up, so don't expect to lose them overnight. So the next two steps cover what exercises you should be doing. First up is lifting weights. Now while this won't directly help get rid of your love handles, you it will help indirectly in many ways. First of all, increasing the size of your upper back and shoulder muscles can help create the illusion of a smaller waist and less noticeable love handles. And second of all, if you don't lift weights while your body is in a calorie deficit, more of the weight you lose will be from muscle rather than fat. This can not only negatively impact your metabolism, but the more muscle you lose during a diet also seems to be directly correlated with how likely you'll be to regain the fat afterwards. So think of lifting weights as a way of making you not just look better after you've lost a fat, but also as a safety guard to prevent fat regain in the future. And if you need a lifting routine to get started with, in the description box, I'll put links to a free 3 day, 4 day and 6 day per week routine you can pick from. However, if your main goal right now is to lose your love handles, then you actually don't need much workout volume. Studies have shown that as little as three to six hard sets per muscle per week is likely all you need to maintain your muscle, with older individuals likely needing the top end of that range. So one strategy, especially if you struggle with consistency, is rather than lifting weights five to six times per week, consider for now bringing it down to four or even just three times a week. Or consider reducing your overall number of sets and exercises and use that freed up time and energy towards the next step. Alright, step three. So although lifting weights is great for building muscle, it does have a downside. Lifting weights has been shown to burn on average about 1.7 calories per minute for women and around 3 calories per minute for men, which amounts to roughly 70 to 200 calories burned from an hour long workout. Now while this can be quite a bit higher for Bigger, stronger individuals, it's still just not a very efficient way to burn calories. Jogging or cycling, for example, burns on average about 10 to 20 calories per minute, depending on your weight. So you could potentially burn the same amount of calories as you do from an hour long weightlifting session and in just 10 to 15 minutes of moderate intensity cardio. And the importance of this goes back to creating a calorie deficit. Although you should primarily create a deficit through your diet, you should also aim to increase the calories you burn through exercise. Part of this will be through lifting weights, but most of this should be with cardio. Now, I know the very thought of cardio might scare you away, but as you'll see, cardio doesn't have to be grueling running sessions, and you don't have to do crazy amounts of it. I'll show you an easy yet effective weekly cardio routine that you can get started with right away. But first let me explain why most people need it. So some individuals will be able to get really lean and lose their love handles without any cardio at all. But typically these are people who are already active and on their feet all day. In fact, if you use our calorie calculator, you'll see there's almost a 700 calorie difference in daily calories burned from someone who sits all day compared to someone with a very active job and on their feet all day. So unless you have quite an active job or lifestyle without any cardio, you're going to have to eat quite a low amount of calories in order to lose fat. And as I'll explain in the next step, this amount will only get lower and lower as you get closer to losing your love handles. Plus, one unique benefit of cardio is that regardless of if you lose weight or not, it'll help reduce your visceral fat, the deep, dangerous fat in your belly. This is obviously great for your health, but also might even make a small difference with losing love handles by reducing the overall size of your belly. But it's important you do the right type and the right amount of cardio. Just like your diet, you need something you can stick to week after week. So what I'd recommend is just start with walking track on average how many steps a day you're currently taking and aim to bump that up by 2,000 steps a day. Once you can do that, bump it up a little more and keep doing that until you reach around 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day. That alone will make a massive difference in your daily calorie burn and might honestly be all that you need. In addition to that, you can also consider adding some low to moderate intensity cardio to your routine, but again, only what you enjoy and can stick to consistently. If you hate running and you're not going to stick to it, then don't run. Here's a great example of this from one of our Built With Science members, Ken. He had always struggled with his love handles, but finally started seeing some progress after simply adding 20 to 30 minutes of incline walking after each of his workouts, combined with taking longer walks with his dog. So try cycling, swimming, incline walking, spike ball, anything that gets you moving counts. Start out with 15 to 20 minutes two to three times a week, and from there use what will show you the next step to determine if you need to increase this further. Alright, now the plan I've given you so far will work wonders if you stick to it, but chances are at some point you'll get stuck. You see, as you lose weight, your body burns fewer calories. Part of this is due to you just carrying less mass, but part of it is also due to you subconsciously just moving less to preserve your fat stores. As a result, research has shown that a 10% drop in body weight is typically accompanied by 20 to 25% decrease in 24 hour energy expenditure. Now, while being consistent with your steps and activity from step three can definitely help prevent this, it's still likely you'll reach a point where what used to work is no longer working. And you can tell if you've reached this point if you haven't noticed any fat loss or much drop in your body weight for at least two to three weeks. But when this happens, it's important not to make drastic changes to your plan. Generally, there's two things you can do. Option number one is to drop your calorie intake. Now this is a good option if you're already quite active and feel like eating just a little bit less every day. Wouldn't be very difficult to stick to. And typically a decrease of just 100 calories or so per day is all that's needed. Now option two is to go the other way and to increase your activity and the average calories you burn every day. But again, only a small change is needed. This can be as simple as bumping up your daily steps or adding another 20 to 30 minutes of low to moderate intensity cardio into your weekly routine. Now, if you stay consistent with everything I've shown you so far, I guarantee you'll lose your love handles. But honestly, the last step is to consider whether or not it's even worth it. You see, to completely lose your love handles, you have to get very lean, a level of leanness that for most people, including myself, is very difficult to sustain. And I've seen many people fall into the trap of being so obsessed over losing their love handles that they overlook all the progress they've made elsewhere and don't realize how great they already look. For example, here's some of our Build Science members, Saran and Dexter both look incredible, and as you can see in Dexter's case, he's already made a ton of progress with losing his love handles. Yet both are still fixated on completely burning them off. And honestly, to do so, they just have to continue pushing and dieting and to a point where they just may not be able to maintain afterwards. Believe me, I know we all want to look like all the shredded guys on social media, but most of these guys have incredible Gen X, often are natural and also just don't share with you how difficult it is to maintain that shape and how crappy and low energy it can make you feel day to day. So don't worry if you still have a little bit of love handles or lower belly fat, embrace all the progress you've already made, take breaks and just maintain whenever you need to and realize that the extra push just might not be worth the trade off. And if you want a done for you plan that will guide you step by step throughout the whole process, just head over to built with science.com and take the quiz to find the best program for you and your body. Highly recommend giving this video Watch next to learn about what to eat to further help Lose that stubborn fat and I'll see you next time.