How to lose your love handles

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as love handle or pot reducing. When you burn fat you can't tell your body where to take if from. In other words, no matter how many sit-ups or crunches you do, your love handles will not be diminished. The only way is burning off more calories by weight training and doing short high intensity endurance activities. You can do these at home without the high cost of a gym membership.

When you use short burst of intensive exercise you increase muscle metabolism. I read somewhere that muscles need 70 calories per hour, fat only 3. Therefore simply increasing muscle mass burns more calories even when not working out. You don't have to go the gym for this.

Here's a simple way to get an intensive work out that will burn calories fast and therefore help lose your love handles. Begin with a good stretch. Really stretch your legs. Then go outside and run fast for 1 minute, and then as fast as you can for 10 seconds. Do this 10 times. After the first week extend your dashes to 15 seconds. You'll be amazed how fast this will take off your love handles.

Another good way to get intense workouts is to rollerblade or ride a bike fast for a few miles. The idea is to get your heart working which will increase your metabolism and burn more calories.

Another thing you can do though not high intensity is tensing your stomach muscles and drawing your naval toward your spine as hard as you can for at least 3 times per day. The simplicity of this exercise means you can perform it sitting or standing and in almost any situation. I do this throughout the day. I pull my stomach muscles back until it hurts and I keep them there as long as possible. This strengthens the gut muscles pulling them in. Combined with short, intense exercises and watch what I'm eating I noticed a very fast loss of inches around my waist.

Diet plays an important role. Exercise and proper diet are like two wings on a plane. They are both important but one without the other does not work. You need both if you want to lose your love handles.

I think it is pointless to follow a rigid eating guide to lose your love handles. Much easier and therefore more likely to be followed, is to reduce your calorie intake to 1500-1900 calories. I make a mental calculation of what I eat throughout the day and adjust my intake to keep it between 1500 -1900 calories. I read the amount of calories on a chocolate bar, spoonful of honey, bowl of cereal, cup of yogurt, fried egg and so forth. That helps me say yes or no to food that I otherwise would consume without being aware of how many calories I was eating.

Here are several simple yet important factors to consider as you try to lose your love handles.

Eat several small balanced meals per day. Make sure that you cover each of the food groups each day. You need fruits, vegetables, and grains in multiple servings everyday. You need meat and dairy products once or twice a day. By making sure that your body gets the right amounts of the right foods, you will limit the amount of stored energy that builds on the body in the form of fat. By eating several times a day, you increase your metabolism. It works better for weight loss than three larger meals in a day.

Cut back on saturated fats. You should not avoid fat all together, as some fats are good for you. You should limit saturated fat, however. Eat smaller amounts of fatty meat and dairy products, and switch to lower fat varieties of the ones you normally eat. Bake instead of fry your foods to save fat calories. Use extra virgin olive oil to fry, if you do choose to fry, because they have more monounsaturated fats than shortenings and vegetable oil.

An important fact to remember is that in order to lose weight, you must create a calorie deficit. It is easier and healthier to cut back your calorie intake a little bit at a time. Every 3,500 calories is equivalent to one pound.

So, if you cut back 500 calories a day, you should lose about one pound per week. That said, If you exercise to burn off 500 calories a day you should lose approximately one pound per week. Do both, and ... you get the picture. Ideally, you should do a combination of both, (such as cut back 250 calories; burn an extra 250 calories).

Your weight loss will vary from week to week and at times you may even gain a little weight -- if you're working out you could be developing muscle, which weighs more than fat.

The long-term results are what matters.

You will discover that as you commit yourself to getting in shape you will make better eating decisions. It will become much easier to resist the fat producing donut and replace it with fruit or some other food with less calories. When it comes to watching my food intake the secret was to eat what I enjoy but keep the calories in mind.