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Ultimate guide to losing your love handles - lies exposed!

I wanted to write a ‘core’ post about one of the most common weight loss questions that women ask - “how do I lose my love handles?”. In this post I will go over the facts and methods you need to know if you want to get rid of your love handles for good and achieve your ideal weight.

Love handles

First I should start the post by saying that there is nothing wrong with having a bit of a love handle on your waist. As far as I am concerned there is only one acceptable reason for wanting to lose weight off of your wasit and that is…

… to get healthy!

If you have any other reason like:

• to look good;
• to make me feel better about myself;
• because if I’m thin it will make me a better person;

then I think you should re-assess why you want to lose weight and re-think your motivation. These motivations for weight loss are often not good for one’s self esteem and even more often lead to short-lived weight loss results.

Losing love handle fat from your waist - the basics

I intend that this post will be for those who are just starting out on their weight loss journey, or for those who have been on it for a while and lost their way somewhat. I am a big believer in constantly looking at your inspiration and goals and making sure they are firm in your mind. So, browse over this post and the others in the weight loss category and get inspired again.

Now for the weight loss basics…

1 - Diet is number one!

When you put on weight it means that you are consuming more calories then you are burning off in the day. These calories are then getting stored as fat. This has two sides to it. Firstly, you can try and burn off those calories with exercise and cardio. Secondly, you can consume less calories so that your body has less to absorb as fat.

Now, while cardio is a vital part of any weight loss program, it is important to understand that you give yourself the best possible chance if your diet is on track. Less calories in your mouth means less you will have to do in the gym. Remember this!

The best type of diet is a natural one that consists of non man-made foods and is mainly made up of:

• Free range meats, fish and eggs;
• Lots of fruit;
• Lots of vegetables;

I really like to encourage all my readers to move away from ideas of a weight loss diet and just get back to living healthy. By doing this the weight will come off almost effortlessly.

The foods you want to avoid at all costs are:

• Processed foods like biscuits and snack bars;
• Pasta, white bread and other flours;
• Refined sugar in fizzy drinks, lollies and processed foods
• Almost anything man-made.

If you do just this for your weight loss I would guess that you wouldn’t need to do much exercise at all and you will see results.

2 - Forget weight loss and get healthy!

I should have made this the motto of this site because it is the best advice I ever got. I really want everyone reading this to move away from the ideas of weight loss programs and getting skinny to living a healthy, balanced and quite natural lifestyle. It is one of the best moves I ever made!

On a natural diet you will find that any excess weight you have melts away, you feel better all day long, you have much more energy and you don’t get sick as often. In fact, when I base my diet mostly around fruit I find that I often don’t catch the local cold or flu that is going around.

So, next time you are shopping for the week’s food try to make choices that include mostly natural foods and don’t just grab the pre-packaged crap in boxes off of the shelf.

3 - Water is essential

You need to start drinking copius amounts of water. Water flushes out your system, helps with digestion and stops you from getting too hungry inbetween meals. Many women find that they are able toy stop junk food snacking completely if they keep a water bottle with them during the day and sip on it constantly.

Many doctors are now finding the amazing health benefits of drinking more water too. One doctor who was in a war prison was only able to treat patients with huge doses of water and found that it cured many common ailments.

A good idea is to fill up your daily amount of water in four bottles and leave them in your fridge. Make sure they are all finished before you eat dinner.

4 - Want weight loss - get moving!

I am a bit of a beliver that ‘all roads lead to Rome’ when it comes to weight loss. You burn calories everytime you workout so it is important to workout, not to find some magic workout program!

Many women worry about the ‘fat burning zone’ and other promotional junks that the weight loss industry has cooked up but I really hope that by the end of this post you will realize that the important thing is not what you do, it is just that you are doing it!

Here is my argument that justifies my comments and I guarantee that no weight loss company will be able to refute this!

The fat burning zone is almost useless as if you are on a weight loss program you are aiming to lose weight. You can lose weight by either burning fat stores or burning calories so that they do not become fat stores. Therefore, the fat burning zone and the perfect heart rate are a little bit silly because if you do not burn fat during the workout, your workout will cause your metabolism to speed up (with your heart rate) and you will burn calories long after you finish.

So, the next time you find yourself on the way to the gym worrying about your heart rate or your workout length or anything like that remember that the important thing is that you are doing SOMETHING!

That said, I need to make some guidelines. There is a FASTER way to do things. For example, high intensity cardio is a better weight loss choice for the gym as it will boost your metabolism and keep your heart rate up in the post workout much longer than low intensity cardio will.

Also, performing cardio before breakfast is a much more effective way of burning fat as your body has no sugar in the blood to use as energy and thus reverts to burning fat stores.

5 - Make short term weight loss goals to help you meet a long term goal

I am a big beliver of making weight loss a long term goal whereby you get to a weight you are happy with and maintain it. Bouncing around from weight to weight is not only frustrating it is also not very healthy.

So, I ask everyone to take a day to think about their weight loss goals and write them down. If you struggle to keep goals you make (me!) then look at the written down goals everyday and say them out a loud. This does wonders for anyone who needs to keep a goal.

Now, don’t just make your goal something weak like “I want to lose weight”. Make it concrete and well structured. When making your weight loss goal make sure you include these elements:

• A specific target weight;
• A mean of achieving it; and
• A specific time by when you will achieve it.

If you do not have a timeline then I can almost guarantee that you will NOT get to your target. Set a date that is important to you like the start of summer, your birthday or Christmas day. This will make it easy to remember.

6 - Motivations and inspirations

To get through the tough first few weeks you need to rely on internal and external motivators. Hopefully you will have a really good reason for wanting to lose weight like:

• to get healthy;
• to live longer;
• to be around to see my children have children;
• to avoid serious illness

If you have a weight loss motivation like this then you can remind yourself each time you see yourself slipping of how bad it would be if you didn’t get there. That said, sometimes you won’t care a less whether you get there you will just want to eat KFC! In those times you need some external motivators like:

• a husband who supports you;
• a photo of someone you admire;
• a reminder of the consequences (like smoking adverts)

These will quite often keep you on track. One of my favourite methods for keeping on track is to look at a calendar of all the successful weight loss days and think how all my hard work will go to waste if I give up now. That tends to help.

7 - Take it easy!

It is really important to be able to take it easy. Don’t get stressed over calorie counting and carbs this and fat that. If you are invited out to a nice dinner with your friends then go and order whatever the heck you want! If you know you will be able to go back to the healthy diet tomorrow then one day out of 365 isn’t going to kill you. As a matter of fact, one day out of seven isn’t going to kill you!

Take it easy and slow down!

8 - Weight train for faster weight loss

Training with weights should be a must for every woman. It strengthens your bones to help prevent osteoporosis and arthritis and it speeds up your internal fat burning environment so that you burn fat faster.

Without going into details, fat and muscle do not live well together! And, muscle always wins over fat. So, do not slave away on the treadmill for hours, add some weight training into your weight loss program as well and you will see results much quicker!

Back to the love handles

The love handles will leave when the fat on the rest of your body does. You cannot lose weight off of only one part of your body so get healthy, get moving and get happy! It may take some time but the results will be worth it.

Conclusion
Weight loss should be something that you love to do. It should make you feel good about yourself and it should make you feel healthier. If it is a constant struggle then you are doing something wrong.

Want more information?

Do you need a bit more help to lose your love handles? No problem, head over to our fitness forum and ask one of our experts! We can answer any questions you have about weight loss, fitness and healthy dieting!

Does anyone have any other balanced weight loss tips that I should add to the list?

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