How to Get Rid of Love Handles Naturally - without Drugs, Pills, or Surgery

How to lose love handles and get rid of them the natural way. A pro bodybuilder reveals his secrets!

Did you know that even if you did 1000 crunches every day it may not help you get rid of your love handles? I’m not telling you this to scare you! On the contrary, you need to know the TRUTH about abdominal training and the bodyfat surrounding your midsection. This may sound counter-intuitive, but if you have love handles, it's not an issue of “muscle development” at all. You simply have too much body fat in that area. The love handles are an area that happens to be the one place that most people - especially men - store their body fat first.

This helps to explain why ab exercises have little impact on getting rid of love handles. It's a huge mistake to think that hundreds or thousands of reps of ab exercises will remove your love handles, except to the degree that it burns calories and contributes to the calorie deficit. What removes the love handles fat - and all over your body - is a calorie deficit and that comes from decreasing food intake, increasing activity, or a combination of both.

What I suggest to those looking to get rid of their love handles is cutting back all excessive ab training, spending that extra time for more intense, calorie-burning cardio and weight training for the rest of the body. I also suggest you do an accounting of your food intake, get your nutrition in order and decrease your calories slightly, if necessary.

Get Rid of Love Handles with my Six Pack Abs Exercise Routine

You should only need to do about two ab exercise sessions every week to condition your obliques (the muscles underneath your love handles). Don't even think about thousands of reps of sit ups or crunches – it’s a waste of time for ridding love handles. The reason my abs look the way they do is not from endless repetitions, but because I get my body fat down into the single digits with a highly specialized fat-burning diet program.  

Here’s a recent ab exercise routine that I've used (for bodybuilding/ ab-development purposes). I do this routine only twice a week and I change the ab exercises approximately every month so my body doesn't adapt. I prefer slightly higher rep range than other muscle groups, but as you can see, it is far from doing a thousand reps a day.

A1 Hanging Leg Raises
3 sets, 15-20 repetitions

Superset with:

A2 Hanging Knee-Ups (bent-knee leg raises)
3 sets, 15-20 repetitions
(no rest between supersetted exercises A1 & A2, 60 seconds between supersets)

B1 Weighted Swiss Ball Crunches (or weighted cable crunches)
3 sets, 15-20 repetitions

Superset with:

B2 Incline Bench Reverse Crunches
3 sets, 15-20 repetitions
(no rest between supersetted exercises B1 & B2, 60 seconds between supersets)

Nutrition Secrets to Help You Lose Love Handles

That leads us to nutrition. Many people say that "abdominals are made in the kitchen, not in the gym," and there's a lot of truth to that. You can do thousands of reps of ab work every week, but if your nutrition is not in order, you can forget about losing your love handles and getting a great set of 6-pack abs.  Here is a list of kitchen secrets that will help you lose your love handles and reveal that coveted six pack.

1. Eat about 15-20% below your calorie maintenance level. If you use a more aggressive calorie deficit of 25-30%, then do not keep calories too low for too long; increase calories to maintenance or maintenance +10-15% 1-2 days per week.
2. Spread your calories into 5-6 smaller meals instead of 2-3 big ones. Be very conscious of portion size. If you eat too much of anything (even "healthy" food), you can say goodbye to losing your love handles. Period.
3. Eat a source of complete, high quality lean protein with each meal (egg whites, lean meat, fish, protein powder, etc)
4. Choose natural, complex carbs such as vegetables, oatmeal, yams, potatoes, beans, brown rice and whole grains. Start with aprox. 50% of your calories from natural carbs and reduce carbs slightly (esp. late in the day) if you are not losing fat.
5. Avoid refined, simple carbs that contain white flour or white sugar.
6. Keep total fats low and saturated fats low. Aim for 20% of your total calories from fat (and no more than 30%). A little bit of "good fat" like flax oil, fish fat, nuts & seeds, etc. is better than a no fat diet. Essential fatty acids actually assist in the fat burning process.
7. Drink plenty of water - a gallon is a good ballpark to shoot for if you are physically active.

1000+ reps of daily ab work is an amazing feat of endurance, but that’s not how you get rid of love handles or get visible, 6-pack abs! If you were to do 1,000 reps of ab exercises every day, you would have outstanding development in your abdominal muscles and you would definitely have great muscular endurance. Unfortunately, if your abs are covered up with a layer of fat, you will never see them even if you do 10,000 reps a day!

Nutrition experts love to say, "You can’t out-train a lousy diet."

It's a monumental error to think that 1,000 reps of ab work a day will make your love handles disappear when your diet is a disaster and that's leading to fat storage. It’s not that ab exercises aren’t important. But all the ab exercises in the world won't help as long as you still have body fat covering the muscles. You can't "spot reduce" with abdominal exercise and YOU CAN'T SEE YOUR ABS THROUGH A LAYER OF BODY FAT!

Try out this advice and you will be on your way to a leaner, healthier body. For a complete program that will show you exactly how to get rid of love handles permanently and naturally, check out www.BurnTheFat.com