If you’re like me, you hate back fat. Today, I’m presenting a few proven methods to reduce your love handles. I’ll cover this material in four parts, including diet, the gym, hormones, and my top-secret fat-shredding cocktail of natural supplements.
What you consume — diet
If you expect to reduce your body fat, you must be in a caloric deficit. That being said, you need to know where you’re starting from. I recommend tracking everything you eat for one week. Look at how many calories you’re consuming and adjust from there.
- Reduce your calories by 1000 calories a day, and you’ll see your fat loss drop super quickly. I recommend shooting for about 1 lb of weight loss per week, a reduction of 3,500 calories per week.
- Focus on high-quality foods, which means eliminating refined carbohydrates like white bread and white pasta.
- Also, reduce sugar consumption. Sugar makes your insulin level go through the roof. When your insulin level is up, your body will store fat, which is unused calories.
- Just remember that fat is unutilized calories. Consume less. A pro tip is to limit the amount that you’re eating out. There are lots of sneaky, dirty calories in food when you’re eating out. Prepare your meals in advance. I use the Factor Calorie Smart Plan, which meals are 550 calories or less. This allows me to stay on my plan but still enjoy delicious meals. Use code 50ALPHAM to get 50% OFF your first Factor box plus 20% off your next month of orders.
What you do daily — exercise
Take dieting a bit slower and get your butt into the gym to make sure your muscles don’t atrophy.
- If you want to lose your love handles, you must make sure you’re lifting weights. Ensure you do big lifts such as squats, bench presses, deadlifts, and pull-ups. The wider your upper body, the more drastic the drop down to your waist will be.
- My pro tip is that some underwear and shorts will make your love handles look worse. So, size up. Also, instead of wearing an elastic waistband for a bathing suit, opt for a solid band with a tie front without elastic.
- We also need to talk about cardio. If you want to drastically reduce your love handles and body fat, hop on the treadmill and crank up the incline. You don’t need to run. Walk on an incline for about 30 to 45 minutes every single day. You could also do the stair stepper. If you want to take it to the next level, wear a weighted vest, which will make your walking more challenging. If you genuinely want to dip into fat stores, you need to get into a consistent habit of doing cardio every single day. You can also walk outside if you don’t want to do the treadmill. Running and jogging are also going to increase the amount of calories that you’re burning.
What are your hormone levels — testosterone and beyond
If you have high estrogen or low testosterone or a combination of both, you’ll have a more difficult time reducing your body fat because you’ll store more fat, and the more fat you have, the higher the conversion from testosterone to estrogen. It’s a vicious cycle.
- To ensure your testosterone is maxed, reduce your body fat by eating healthy, taking supplements, reducing endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and getting tested. You need to know where you’re starting from; a blood test can help you.
- Trying lifestyle modifications can boost your testosterone. Lifting weights is one of the best things you can do to boost your body’s production of testosterone.
- Sleep is also an important component. Your testosterone is produced when you sleep, so you need at least 7 to 9 hours of sound slumber nightly. Not sleeping will also work out your cortisone levels, which will increase your body fat.
Know what supplements work and how to optimize their performance
Muscles are hard to gain, but they are also hard to lose. You will not lose it just because you’re in a caloric deficit or doing fast to cardio. I wouldn’t recommend super intense cardio because if you go over 80% of your target heart rate reserve, you will utilize muscle glucose and glycogen as energy as opposed to fatty acids.
- I competed in natural bodybuilding, and to reduce love handles and back fat, I used L-carnitine every day. It’s a natural amino acid that helps to utilize fats better. Combined with steady-state cardio (in your target zone) on an empty stomach first thing in the morning, fatty acids will be used as energy.
- I also take CLA, a fatty acid that breaks down fat. The L-carnitine transports fat to muscles for energy.
- The combination of CLA and L-carnitine twice a day is a game changer when combined with cardiovascular exercise on an empty stomach.
