Love handles

When I started out I found that my "love-handles" were the first thing to shrink, much to my delight. (They are still there a little but have aren't nearly as obvious!) Haven't lost much off my tummy yet though and I'm 6 weeks in. I think as somebody has already said a lot depends on your natural body shape and also how large those areas are to begin with, too.

happy_squid said:
The best move I know, one of my favourites, is to do crunches on a ball, Just be careful not to fall off the ball!
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Lol. Falling off the ball was exactly what sprang to mind as I read this. It's definately something that is likely to happen to me (I've fallen off the treadmill already) so although this sounds like a good excercise I wont go for it for now.
 
There are no exercises available to specificly loose the weight around your gut and your love handles.

You need to change your diet and exercise to burn bodyfat. The problem is your body will choose where to burn the fat from and generally burns it evenly from all the stores on your body. There is no way to force spot reduction of a particular area sorry.
 
fms said:
There are no exercises available to specificly loose the weight around your gut and your love handles.

You need to change your diet and exercise to burn bodyfat. The problem is your body will choose where to burn the fat from and generally burns it evenly from all the stores on your body. There is no way to force spot reduction of a particular area sorry.
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There you go ruining everyone's good time with the truth. :p

Now how are we supposed to convince ourselves that doing 500 crunches a day and/or buying the latest ab gizmo will give us a 6 pack?
 
I agree with that. Hiking really burned it for me. But to help tone up the area, more local exercise can help a little. Sit-ups on an exercise ball and some rebounding have been really helpful in my case.

John
 
I use the exercise ball too. Puts more into my workout. Working out the day of the big feast really works for me. The morning before I eat anything I make sure I do a 40 minute or more workout. The food doesn't sit there like it does if you hadn't worked out. I've been doing this for two years. At least it doesn't put a wrench in my workout. I also take 15 minute breaks between eating so I don't eat until i can't breath anymore. I used to eat like that... it was awful. Still got thirty pounds to go tho. Hey, at least it's not more.:eek:
 
tummy fats are about the most stubborn fats in our body. I will recommend a cardio regime and a strictly controlled diet.
 
A metaphor that I read in the "Body by God" book is that think of your body and its fat stores as a big parking lot with snow all over it, and a snow plow pushes up the majority of the snow into big piles. When you're losing weight, you're basically like the sun coming out on a warm day and melting it away. Now, there is no way to tell the sun to only shine on those big piles. No, the sun has to shine on EVERYTHING, which melts the thin layers easily, but it has to work on the big piles for awhile. So basically, there is no way to pinpoint where you want the fat to be burned off of, you just have to continue to lose weight and lose it everywhere.
 
Need to get rid of belly flab and love handles

I've been working out religiously 5 days a week since January 1st. I have lost about 7 pounds but when I look in the mirror, the changes are very minor (loss is in my face, boobs, and arms). My major problem area is my stomach/love handles. My husband says I need to do more sit ups.

I've just increased my cardio from 30 minutes a day to 45 minutes a day.

Mondays are my ab days which includes 3 sets of 25 crunches, 3 sets of 25 reverse crunches, 3 sets of 15 crunch twists.

Do I need to do more ab work or will increasing the cardio be good enough? If not, any suggestions for ab exercises and should I ad resistance to my ab workouts?

I have a wedding to go to in 3 weeks and would like to lose at least another 5 pounds by then.
 
First, how much weight do you have to lose?

Second, you have lost 7 lbs in 3 months, and now you expect to lose 5 lbs more in 3 weeks. I doubt it is going to happen, ESPECIALLY if you keep doing what you've been.

Third, what do you think doing abdominal exercises does to your fat? Last time I checked, doing any form of resistance training stressed the muscles and did nothing for the fat.

OK, done being a smart-ass, sorry! :p

Look, you can't spot reduce. You can't say to yourself, "My belly is fat so I am going to do a lot of ab work and get rid of this spare tire." Lifting weights (crunches is lifting weights) does nothing to the fat. You can't turn fat into muscle and vice versa.

Fat loss is triggered through energy balance. You create an energy deficit and your body has no choice but to catabolize (breakdown) its existing tissues (fat) in order to meet the energy requirements that your body has day to day.

You create this energy deficit by eating below maintenance calorically speaking, increasing activity, or ideally, a combination of the both.

How long have you been running for. If you have been running for 3 months more than 3 times per week, chances are good that you are ready to move on to interval training and then high intensity interval training.

Are you weight training besides abdominal work? I can tell you right now that you should stop doing so much ab work.

How are you eating. Unless you only have a little bit of weight to lose, 7 lbs does not seem like that much weight loss with 3 months of exercise. Granted, if you are already lean and looking to get leaner, then 7 lbs is good. But if you have any significant amount of body fat, 7 lbs loss over a span of 3 months indicates to me that you may be eating too much.

Remember, I don't know much about you. Nothing really, I just pointing out some things I was thinking as I read through your post. Hopefully you will respond which will clear some things up and we can continue the discussion. :)
 
My thought on doing more ab work was to strengthen the muscle to help increase fat loss and I'd like to weigh 120. I currently fluctuate between 135 and 140 and I am 5'2".

When you say I should move on to interval training, what exactly do you mean? I do the interval program on the elliptical every time I use it. Besides my ab workouts, I do weight training 5 days a week as well focusing on a specific body part. Mondays are abs, Tuesdays are back, Wednesday is legs, Thursday is chest and Friday is shoulders. I carry around a book and began to track all my progress 5 weeks ago.

Breakfast is a banana and Kashi Crunch with skim milk
Snack is raw veggies
Lunch is a Healthy Choice meal
Dinner is chicken with veggies or sometimes I make two tortillas and bake them so they're crispy and then I add black beans and hot sauce with a little bit of cheese. Yesterday I had chicken wrapped in a whole wheat tortilla with guacamole and salsa.
Plus, I drink about 75 ounces of water per day.
 
You seem like you are on the right track!!! Steve is right about the spot reducing. It can't be done. I'm sure this is a plateau, so don't get discouraged. I'm starting to hit a small plateau myself, and I'm just trying to change up my routine, and keep lifting weights.
Keep working hard!
 
denisio said:
My thought on doing more ab work was to strengthen the muscle to help increase fat loss and I'd like to weigh 120. I currently fluctuate between 135 and 140 and I am 5'2".

When you say I should move on to interval training, what exactly do you mean? I do the interval program on the elliptical every time I use it. Besides my ab workouts, I do weight training 5 days a week as well focusing on a specific body part. Mondays are abs, Tuesdays are back, Wednesday is legs, Thursday is chest and Friday is shoulders. I carry around a book and began to track all my progress 5 weeks ago.

Breakfast is a banana and Kashi Crunch with skim milk
Snack is raw veggies
Lunch is a Healthy Choice meal
Dinner is chicken with veggies or sometimes I make two tortillas and bake them so they're crispy and then I add black beans and hot sauce with a little bit of cheese. Yesterday I had chicken wrapped in a whole wheat tortilla with guacamole and salsa.
Plus, I drink about 75 ounces of water per day.
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Hmmm, I am not quite sure I understand. How does strengthening your abdominals help with fat loss?

Secondly, you are dieting, which means you are in a caloric deficit. That said, you really should not be training with weights 5 times per week. Lifting weights while in an energy deficit serves the purpose of maintaining the muscle that you already have. It does not take much to trigger muscle maintenance. On top of this, training each body part once per week is very inefficient and ineffective regardless of your energy intake. So something like a full body routine a few times per week would be a lot better for you.
 
Your "lack of weight loss" may really be "muscle gain" since muscle weighs more than fat, you may have actually lost more fat than you think. I wish I had your drive. I tend to pop out after 4 times a week.

I have no idea what I weigh right now, but it seems since I started doing ab work, my trunk seems "thicker" I don't know what that's about, but I don't like it. Perhaps the muscles you're building in your stomach leaves a similar impression.
 
Love Handles help me out!

So I'm 6'0" and weighing about 210 now and my figure looks pretty good....but my love handles and sagging stomach are throwing off my whole figure.

I exercise and weightlift for 3-4 hours 4-5 times a week, and everyone says I look decent now but when I look in the mirror etc I look at myself everything is fine except that my figure is a pear because of my lovehandles...any suggestions? Oh and things to help firm the stomach :p
 
First off, You can not spot reduce.

Secondly, I may have misunderstood your statement. But, its not beneficial to spend 3-4 hours a day in a gym.

thirdly, It sounds as if you "need" to lower your body fat further.

Fourthly, You should not be spending 4-5 days a week in a gym weight lifting unless you were on a split routine that requires the time.

It might be beneficial for you to list your current routine in detail.

PS,
Abs are made in the kitchen, You need to lower body fat for these to ever become "firm" or visible.
 
Sorry Trevor I probably should of elaborated a bit more see I exercise that much because its our summer weightlifting/conditioning for football, and yes I do need to lose a bit more fat.

Also you say abs are made in the kitchen...when you say lower body fat...how do you go about doing that...more protein less carbs and fats?

Because as its been the past 2 months Ive eaten 50% protein, 35% carb, 15% fat everyday >_< and I don't see much of results.
 
Wow, that's a lot of time in the gym. The "carefree" days.... oh how I miss them. In my opinion, and I'm no expert, but when I looked my best, I ate a ton of protein and very little else. It was nothin for lunch to be a can of tuna fish with lemon pepper. Also try working your abs with a variety of different ab workouts. You don't work all of the ab muscles with just crunches. Others to try are "bicycles, side crunch, leg lift, whole body crunch", etc.. I could go into more detail if you'd like, but don't want to bore everyone.
 
Fat isn't your enemy here. You could eat a diet of 90% fats, while unhealthy, You could still very well loose weight on it so long as your "calorie restriction" is sustained.
No single macronutrient makes you fat (fat,protein,carbohydrates) Its the calorie that does. So find out how many calories your eating right now. Fitday.com - Start entering all your food into there to find out.

Raise your fat intake some, 15% is far to low. Try to incorporate more fish like wild Alaskan salmon into your diet. Great for Omega-3's and protein intake. Shoot for a minimum of 20-25%.

You definitely need to raise carb intake up. If you are going to be exerting yourself as such then you must be sure glycogen stores are maintained at full or as close as possible. The prime influence to protein catabolism is when the body is in/near a glycogen depleted state. 3-4hours is enough if the conditions are right to reduce a already low store to nil.
Remember, Whole grains,whole wheat, fibrous carbs and so on are where near all of your carbs are coming from.


Regardless of what time of the year it is. 3-4 hours a day 5 days a week will NOT be beneficial to anything other then chronic fatigue, injury,stagnation and so on. With your current macro breakdown and your current exercise regimen you are in a prime state for "Lean mass breakdown". You need to slow down, fix your %, find your calorie intake and go from there. Trust me, working like that nearly everyday until football season will only hinder your performance, less is more.
 
It is happening very slowly, but I can notice some difference in my body. I am losing weight, and gaining muscle. Everywhere except my sides, it seems. These are still just as big and fatty as ever. Do I need to do something specific to make them change?
 
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