How to Get Rid of Love Handles

“Love handles” is a cute name for a serious problem: fatty deposits on the back and sides of the waist. They’re not just unsightly, they’re unhealthy, too. Fortunately, you can get rid of love handles once and for all by making some small changes to your lifestyle.

Lose Fat All Over

Love handles are a sign of excess abdominal fat. This is a stubborn and dangerous type of fat that can lead to metabolic disorders and even serious heart disease. Reducing the fat around your waistline can decrease your chance of becoming diabetic or suffering a heart attack.

If you’ve considered targeting your abdominal fat and nothing else, don’t bother; there’s no such thing as spot reduction. If there were, none of us would have problem areas and we would all be perfectly proportioned! But in reality, if you want to get rid of love handles, you have to get rid of fat everywhere else, too.

Cardio exercise will help you burn fat faster. Strength training will increase your lean muscle mass, which in turn will make you burn calories faster. Eating at a slight calorie deficit will keep you from storing extra calories as fat. The best way to get rid of love handles is to do all three.

Build Stronger Obliques

The obliques are the muscles that run down both sides of your abdomen. They frame the group of muscles commonly called the 6-pack. Obliques give us the strength to twist and turn when we need to. Unfortunately, they are sometimes hidden by love handles.

Building stronger obliques will help you burn more calories, and will give you tight abdominal muscles to show off after the love handles are gone.

You can get rid of love handles faster by doing exercises that were found by the American Council on Exercise to be the very best ones for working your obliques: Bicycle crunches, captain’s chair leg raises, and vertical leg crunches.

Bicycle crunches involve lying down on your back and doing crunch-twists while pedaling your legs as if you were riding a bicycle. Captain’s chair leg raises require the use of a captain’s chair, which is a common fixture in most gyms. Vertical leg crunches are performed like regular crunches, but with your legs raised perpendicular to the ground.

Do a search for these exercises to find helpful step-by-step guides with photos.

Eat Fat-Burning Foods

Some foods, especially those high in sugar and sodium, add inches to the waistline. To get rid of love handles, you’ll need to eat more foods that fight belly fat. Doctors recommend heart-healthy fats, like those found in olive oil, nuts, and salmon; 3 servings of calcium from green, leafy vegetables or dairy products; and plenty of fiber from fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

These foods are digested slowly, so they leave you feeling satisfied longer. Add some green tea to your diet for an extra fat-burning boost. Three cups a day will speed up your metabolism and ward off diseases.

Check Your Clothes

One last quick and dirty trick to get rid of love handles: Make sure your clothes fit properly. Tight clothing can create the illusion of love handles, even on thin folks. If you’ve worked hard to lose your love handles, don’t ruin the effect by squeezing into jeans that leave you overflowing!

How to Get a Firm Belly

It seems that we place a lot of importance on taut, flat stomachs. Every day, advertisements promise to help us “Get a firm belly”, or “Get sculpted abs”. What they don’t tell us is that belly fat isn’t just unattractive, it’s hazardous to your health.

Numerous studies have found a link between belly flab and high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. Measure your waist to see if you have a dangerous level of abdominal fat. For optimal health, men should have a waist circumference below 40 inches. Women should have a waist circumference below 35 inches.

Here are some proven techniques to help you get a firm belly and reduce dangerous abdominal fat:

Move More, Eat Right

Exercise doesn’t have to be done at a gym. You can burn calories while you participate in activities that you consider fun or fulfilling. For example, gardening burns several hundred calories per hour. Team sports, like flag football, burn even more. Swimming is also a great fat-burner, and fun to boot. You could also do volunteer work, or just take long walks down nature trails.

Cardio exercise will kick your fat-burning metabolism into overdrive. All it requires is persistence; if you can find an activity you like, and stick with it, the pounds will melt away. It’s also important to vary your routine for maximum calorie burning, and to ward off boredom.

There are several exercises you can do to get a firm belly. The American Council on Exercise did a study to find out which exercises targeted the abs most effectively. Their findings? Supine bicycle, captain’s chair leg lifts, and vertical leg crunches work the abs harder than any other exercise. Twisting crunches and exercise ball crunches were other good ones. Try doing those exercises several times a week to get a firm belly and whittle your waistline. An Internet search will turn up detailed step-by-step tutorials for each exercise.

There are foods that can help you get a firm belly, too. Sugary carbs contribute to belly fat build-up, but foods high in protein and fiber are slenderizing. Look for a diet plan comprised mostly of complex carbs, lean protein sources, and unsaturated fats. South Beach is a classic example, and similar diets have come on the market in recent years.

Learn to Relax

Who would have thought that you could get a firm belly while you relax? It’s possible with the help of yoga. Yoga has a two-fold effect on our bellies. First, it reduces high stress levels that lead to weight gain. Stress-induced weight gain often results in excess belly fat. Reducing your stress level can give you a flatter stomach and lower your risk for many diseases.

Yoga also tones the stomach muscles. Look for a yoga routine that includes supine poses and other postures that work the abdominal muscles. Check out a yoga DVD from your local library, or look for free video tutorials online. You will be able to tell right away if a particular pose targets the stomach area. To get a firm belly faster, design your own routine using the most effective belly-busting poses.

As you can see, it takes a little effort to get a firm belly — but the rewards are well worth it.

Fat Loss 4 Idiots Review

Many diet plans are too restrictive, leaving dieters unsatisfied and more prone to fall off the wagon. Others, like Fat Loss 4 Idiots, let you eat the foods you enjoy as long as you adhere to certain guidelines. But you must take the good with the bad. We’ve outlined the system’s pros and cons in this helpful Fat Loss 4 Idiots review.

Fat Loss 4 Idiots Review – The Good

Pro: You get to take days off.

Fat Loss 4 Idiots is a cyclical program. You stick to the program for 11 days, then resume your normal eating for 3 days. If you need to lose more weight, you can repeat the cycle. This gives you the opportunity to indulge in ‘forbidden’ foods from time to time.

The diet plan also allows you to have one glass of wine per day, making it one of the few eating plans that includes alcohol. Along with the 3-day break periods, this can keep your morale high without sabotaging your weight loss.

Pro: You can design your own meal plan.

Fat Loss 4 Idiots gives you access to an online meal generator. You can select your favorite foods from a list, and the program uses your foods of choice to create a personalized meal plan. The food choices are limited, though, so don’t expect lots of comfort foods.

While the generated meal plan has quite a bit of variety, it will undoubtedly start to bore you after a couple of weeks. Luckily, there is an upgrade you can purchase which gives you access to a guide called ‘Beyond Calories’. This guide contains more food choices than the online generator.

Pro: There’s a vegetarian option.

Few diet plans cater to vegetarians, but Fat Loss 4 Idiots is one that does. You can generate vegetarian meal plans to follow. Since vegetarian diets are typically low in saturated fat, this is a heart-healthy bonus!

Fat Loss 4 Idiots Review – The Bad

Con: It lacks scientific back-up.

There are no studies backing up the cyclical diet premise. Also, because this program feels like a diet rather than a lifestyle change, there is the risk of gaining back the weight as soon as you start eating normally again. A better approach might be to find an eating plan you can follow for life.

 

Con: It makes dubious claims.

The weight loss industry is full of dubious marketing claims, and Fat Loss 4 Idiots is no exception. The product’s web site claims that you will be able to lose 9 pounds ever 11 days by following the plan. If you lost that much weight in that period of time, a significant amount would be temporary water weight loss.

Con: Lacks structure and can be confusing.

The initial product reads more like a set of loose guidelines than a structured diet plan. Also, there are three diet plans in all, which can get confusing.

Fat Loss 4 Idiots Review – The Bottom Line

The conclusion of our Fat Loss 4 Idiots review is this: It is a fairly sensible, but simple, approach to weight loss. It provides a fairly painless plan to help you shed a few pounds, but for serious fat loss, you’ll need a more involved system that promotes exercise and strength training as well as diet.

Fat Burning Furnace Review

The Fat Burning Furnace System by Rob Poulos is based on the idea that you can kick your metabolism into overdrive by eating the right foods and doing the right exercises.

With the help of this Fat Burning Furnace review, you’ll have all the information you need to decide if this is the right system for you. Let’s get started!

Fat Burning Furnace Review – The Good

Pro: Detailed weight loss program that makes sense.

Poulos takes an in-depth common sense approach to losing weight. The Fat Burning Furnace System offers workouts for every fitness level. If you haven’t exercised in years, you can start with the break-in exercise routine and work your way up to the advanced routine as you get in better shape.

The system is rooted soundly in science. If you gain more muscle and lose fat, you will increase your resting metabolic rate (RMR) because muscle tissue burns more calories than fat tissue. By gaining muscle, you can turn your body into a metabolic furnace.

Pro: Workouts are short, but effective.

For those who don’t relish the thought of working out for hours on end, Fat Burning Furnace has an attractive approach to exercise: Do simple strength training 20 minutes a day, 3 or 4 times a week.

Only one set of each exercise is required, but the exercises are done at a very slow pace to give muscles an extra-effective workout. There are workouts for every muscle group, so you will work your whole body using this system.

One thing the Fat Burning Furnace System is missing is long, boring cardio sessions. Poulos maintains that his short strength-training routines give you a better cardio workout than an hour spent on a treadmill.

Pro: You can purchase upgrades.

The Fat Burning Furnace System comes in Deluxe, Ultimate, and Blowtorch levels. The Ultimate level seems to be the best deal of the three, but the Blowtorch upgrade features two hours of videos of Poulos going through the exercise routines. Beginners should work their way up through the basic, intermediate, and advanced workouts before attempting the Blowtorch-level routines.

Fat Burning Furnace Review – The Bad

Con: Not much emphasis on nutrition.

This is primarily an exercise program. Poulos does a good job of explaining the principles of nutrition, but he does not spend a lot of time telling you what to eat. Compared to the exceptionally detailed exercise guides, the nutrition program leaves the reader a lot of choice – which can be good or bad depending on your eating habits. Be prepared to receive nutritional guidelines and a few sample meals, plus links to recipes you can make for yourself.

Con: Sales pressure can get tiresome.

This Fat Burning Furnace review wouldn’t be complete without a quick caveat: Poulos spends the first 24 pages of the book trying to sell you on his logic and ideas. That’s not so bad, but there are also numerous attempts to push ProGrade food products. If you can look past this, the program is great.

Fat Burning Furnace Review – The Bottom Line

Poulos does a good job of going into detail about how nutrition and exercise affect your body. He doesn’t care for fad diets, and he lays many nutritional myths to rest with his sensible explanations. This program is excellent for people who have damaged their metabolism through years of yo-yo dieting, no matter their current fitness level.

 

Fat Burning Foods

Are there really fat burning foods that can speed up your metabolism? Yes! By eating the right foods, you can trick your body into burning through its extra fat.

Here are some of the tastiest and most convenient fat burning foods you can find:

Citrus and Ginger

When you were young and you felt a cold coming on, your mother probably told you to take lots of vitamin C. Vitamin C is a popular immunity booster, but it has a secret talent as well: It helps you burn fat faster!

Vitamin C boosts your fat-burning power in two ways. First, it speeds up the process of fat metabolism. It also seems to have an effect on fat storage. The citric acid breaks down fat molecules, making them less likely to accumulate and more likely to be flushed from the body.

Due to their Vitamin C content, citrus fruits rank highly among fat burning foods. Try adding a variety of citrus fruits to your diet, such as oranges, tangerines, lemons and limes. It’s better to eat the whole fruit than to drink the juice, because the fruit contains fiber – another fat-fighter. Don’t fancy fruit? Tomatoes are also fat burning foods. Use fresh tomatoes in your homemade sauces for metabolic boost.

Ginger is another tangy fat-burner. It is also a vasodilator, which means that it opens up the blood vessels and improves blood circulation. This can result in a significant boost to the metabolism. In fact, studies suggest that people who eat ginger may lose as much as 20% more fat than their peers.

Ginger and citrus flavors complement each other well, especially in Asian dishes. Experiment with this exotic blend, and you can lose weight without ever feeling deprived.

Oatmeal and Whole Grains

Nothing starts your day off right like a warm bowl of oatmeal. That’s because oatmeal is high in fiber, which stabilizes blood glucose levels and prevents crashes and fatigue. Oatmeal is thick and satisfying, and you can add non-fat milk for an even bigger fat-burning advantage. (Calcium and fiber are proven fat burning foods.)

The carbs in oatmeal provide a quick rise in energy to help you wake up faster. But the carbs are complex and get digested slowly, which keeps your energy up and your appetite low for hours after breakfast. As an added bonus, oatmeal lowers cholesterol, too!

Nuts and Beans

Nuts and beans are nutritious fat burning foods that also keep your appetite in check for long stretches. Like oatmeal, nuts and beans contain fiber that kick-starts your metabolism. Unlike oatmeal, they also contain a significant amount of protein. Protein is vital for building lean muscle mass, which burns calories faster than fat tissue.

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Olive oil has long been recommended by doctors for its heart health benefits. Olive oil contains unsaturated fat that increases the number of high-density lipids in the bloodstream. These lipids, also known as “good cholesterol”, or HDL, sweep bad cholesterol from the arteries. By substituting olive oil for butter and margarine, you can actually lower your bad cholesterol and increase your metabolism.

Fat burnings foods can help you reach your weight loss goal faster. Add some fun cardio exercise and plenty of hydration, and you’ll have a recipe for success!

 

Exercises to Lose Belly Fat

Belly fat has been proven to be the most dangerous type of fat there is. Doctors aren’t sure why, but abdominal fat is related to numerous health risks.

Have you gotten a little thick around the middle? If so, here are some fantastic exercises to lose belly fat and decrease your risk of heart disease.

Exercises to Lose Belly Fat: Cardio

Cardio can help you lose fat all over your body – which is good, because to lose fat around your belly, you have to lose it everywhere. Our bodies tend to accumulate fat in certain areas, based largely on genetics. If you tend to store it around your middle, decreasing your body fat percentage can make you healthier and give you the flat stomach you’ve always wanted.

There are no “best” cardio exercises to lose belly fat. The very best cardio routine is one you’ll stick with for the long haul. Choose a few different activities that you enjoy doing, and try to participate in them at least 5 hours a week.

If you’re into home improvement, do some lawn and garden work. If you’re a parent, play with your kids at the park or take them for long walks down nature trails. If you have a dog, take it for walks or toss a ball or Frisbee for exercise. If you prefer a more social environment, join a group exercise class at your local gym or recreation center.

Exercises to Lose Belly Fat: Core Strength

Getting a slim stomach requires more than endless sit-ups and crunches. Variations on these exercises can help you whittle your waist faster. For example, instead of regular crunches, the American Council on Exercise recommends vertical leg crunches. These are performed lying on your back with your legs held at a 45 degree angle from the floor.

Core strength can also be developed by doing leg lifts and crunches with the help of an exercise ball. Exercise balls require you to maintain your balance, which puts all of your core muscles to work. For muscle symmetry, be sure to work your back muscles as well.

Exercises to Lose Belly Fat: Yoga

When it comes to stress reduction and core strength building, it’s hard to beat yoga in terms of efficiency. Yoga can reduce the production of stress hormones and strengthen your abdominal muscles, making it an excellent exercise to lose belly fat.

Whenever your body is stressed out (due to mental or emotional stress, illness, injury, or the overuse of stimulants), it responds with an attempt at self-preservation. Your brain releases the hormone cortisol, which tells your body to start storing fat – particularly around the waist. This response is a throwback to the days when our ancestors had to survive times of famine.

Yoga includes breathing and stretching exercises that relieve muscle tension and reduce the production of cortisol. Yoga also places an emphasis on relaxed, flowing motions. It can be used to calm the mind, slow down the heart, and lower blood pressure.

In addition to these benefits, many yoga poses are highly efficient for toning your midsection. Look for poses that are performed in the supine position, or seated and standing poses that require you to extend your legs and maintain balance.

With a regular routine of cardio, core strengthening, and yoga, you will lose inches from your waist and enjoy better health and relaxation.

Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle Review

There are so many weight loss programs on the market that it can be difficult to choose one. Let’s take a closer look at Tom Venuto’s ‘Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle’. Review the pros and cons below to decide if this program is right for you.

Pro: It provides a highly personalized approach to weight loss.

‘Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle’ is basically a body type diet. The premise is that people of different body types process foods in different ways. For example, one body type might do better on a diet heavy in complex carbohydrates, while another body type might need a much lower carb intake in order to flourish.

The system teaches you how to determine which body type you are. Then it gives you the information you need to design a diet and fitness plan based on your body type. As you progress, you can adjust your calories and nutrition as needed. This highly personalized plan should, in theory, result in more weight loss than a generic one.

Pro: It provides tons of nutritional information.

This system contains pretty much everything you’ve ever wanted to know about nutrition, especially as it pertains to your individual body type. Venuto delves into the facts about macronutrients, vitamins, and calories. In fact, 270 pages of the core book are devoted to nutrition.

There are comprehensive guides to help you determine your base metabolic rate and caloric needs.

Pro: You can purchase upgrades.

Besides the core book, you can purchase supplemental information such as a series of author interviews, and a subscription to Venuto’s web site. All of the bonuses are high in quality, and the web site itself will easily provide many months of content to read. The web site also features calculators, recipes, and product reviews. The message forums are active and filled with answers and advice.

The amount of information would be valuable to someone who wants to reshape their life and body, but might be too much for casual dieters.

Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle Review – The Bad

Con: It’s not for casual dieters.

By reading this ‘Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle’ review, you’ve potentially saved yourself a lot of time – the core book is 341 pages long! That’s not including the many extras you get with the package, and the ones you can purchase separately. Casual dieters might be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information.

Also, Venuto is a bodybuilder and he writes like a bodybuilder. That is, he places quite a bit of emphasis on getting a low body fat percentage. The competitive bodybuilding information can be a little heavy-handed, but informative.

Con: Exercise is not extensively covered.

Despite the importance of exercise in weight loss and bodybuilding, Venuto devotes most of his pages to nutrition facts. Cardio exercise and weight training are given about 25 pages apiece.

Venuto does go into detail about how exercise affects the body, but tends to suggest exercises without explaining how to do them, leaving the research to the reader. The sample workouts included in the book are more like lists than step-by-step guides.

One bonus: If you’ve ever wondered about weightlifting, you can probably find the answers to all your questions in the weightlifting FAQ.

Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle Review – The Bottom Line

‘Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle’ is an extraordinary product. Its detailed approach to weight loss has earned it many loyal followers. While it might not be the best choice for someone who just needs to lose a few pounds, it shines as a guide to building your best body.

3 Miracle Foods that Burn Fat

Are there really foods that burn fat? It may sound too good to be true, but scientific studies have found that people who consume certain foods end up losing more weight than those who don’t eat the foods – even when all other factors are the same!

Let’s take a look at three of the most popular foods that burn fat, according to science:

Beans

Beans are a preferred protein source for dieters everywhere. They contain a healthy mix of protein and carbohydrates. Beans are challenging to digest, so it takes your body longer to process them. This is a good thing, because it keeps your blood sugar stable and helps you stay full longer.

But the real magic of beans lies in their fiber content. Fiber is like a workout for your digestive system. It keeps things running smoothly, and prevents your blood glucose from spiking too high. Plain beans are the best choice. Sugary baked beans or fatty refried beans can sabotage your weight loss efforts by supplying too many calories and simple carbs.

Skim Milk

Of all the foods that burn fat, calcium is perhaps the most popular proven metabolism booster. In fact, studies have proven that calcium causes weight loss. Two groups of test subjects were studied. The groups did everything the same, except that one group received several servings of calcium each day. Surprisingly, that group lost almost three times as much weight as the group who did not receive extra calcium.

You can get calcium from vegetables like broccoli, but dairy products remain the most popular choice. Choose products made from 2%, 1%, or fat-free milk. They deliver the greatest amount of calcium in the lowest amount of calories.

Green Tea

Green tea has been touted as a dieter’s miracle product for years. It contains powerful antioxidants that reduce the number of potentially cancerous free radicals in the body. Its modest caffeine content is enough to perk up your heart rate and metabolism without putting undue stress on your body. It is also a mild diuretic, which can be helpful for getting rid of retained fluid.

Green tea has also been studied as a fat-burner, and the results have been encouraging. People who drink 4 – 6 cups of green tea per day enjoy faster weight loss than those who don’t drink green tea.

Honorable Mention: Water

Okay, it doesn’t contain nutrition, but water would still rank highly on any list of foods that burn fat. It dilutes sodium to beat bloating, pushes retained fluid from our bodies, promotes healing, and satisfies the appetite. But did you know that water can also keep your metabolism running at maximum efficiency?

It’s true: Our kidneys are our primary filtration system. They help pass toxins and waste fluids out of our bodies. But they need plenty of hydration to keep functioning well. When they are deprived of water, the kidneys call on the liver for back-up.

While the liver can serve as a secondary filtration system, that is not its best use. It is designed for, and excels at, turning stored fat into usable energy. But when it has to support the kidneys, the liver cannot metabolize fat as quickly as it used to. You can bring your metabolism back up to speed by drinking plenty of water each day.

For a quick and productive diet overhaul, start eating foods that burn fat. Add 64 ounces of pure drinking water each day, and you will be on your way to successful and permanent weight loss.