Love handles. Such an odd term for the unsightly bulges around your waist and abdomen. The truth is most people who have these ‘love’ handles loathe the very sight of them. They make it hard to fit your clothes properly, play havoc with your self image and cause you to be constantly thinking about how to improve your physical appearance.
Here are a bakers dozen worth of quick tips on how to lose belly weight and get rid of your nasty love handles.
Don’t stress
Cortisol (the stress hormone) stimulates an increase in your appetite and excess cortisol can also cause muscle breakdown leading to increased body fat storage. Stay calm and carry on!
Get your zzzzzz’s
Don’t get enough sleep? It will hurt your waistline. When you are sleep deprved you are running on low energy and are more likely to grab a quick bag of chips or some other comfort foods.
Drink drink drink
Drinking plenty of water fills you up and keeps your nagging appetite in check! If you don’t drink enough water you will compensate with increased food intake. It is common to feel hungry when you are actually dehydrated.
Eat more… regularly
Eating regularly prevents a spike in blood sugar and subsequent blood sugar crash. We want slow and steady rises and falls in blood sugar levels. Peaks and troughs cause cravings and overeating.
Lay off the booze
Alcohol adds ‘empty’ calories to your diet. 7 calories per gram… but has no nutritional value whatsoever. It’s also a diuretic – making you dehydrated, hungry and more likely to overeat.
Eat more fruit and veges
Natural fruits and veges contain valuable vitamins and minerals that you need, and they also have the upside of containing all important fiber and water.
Skip processed foods
The processing of foods is a key contributor to your waistline and certainly is not how to lose belly weight! Heavy processing significantly changes the nutritional value of basic food ingredients and adds additional calories from sugars and fats.
Ditch the fruit juice
Drinking fruit juice is not a suitable replacement for drinking water. A little bit may be OK – but typically with fruit juice you end up adding a bunch of extra calories (as sugars) without adding any of the goodness of fruit (such as fiber).
Increase your calcium
Calcium is a fat burner. A high calcium diet favors fat burning rather than storing fat. Some researchers say that calcium regulates the hormone calcitriol responsible for promoting fat storage in the body
Snack on…
Nuts, fruits and veges rather than pre packaged snacks
Swap long runs for…
High intensity workouts– to really fire up that fat burning metabolism. This type of training is often referred to as HIIT training (High Intensity Interval Training).
Catch up with mates
Partner up with those with similar fitness or weight loss goals. It will make you more likely to stick with your training in the long run.
Lift weights
Intense weight training workouts are fantastic at driving post workout elevation of your metabolic rate. Meaning what? Meaning you’ll get a much bigger increase in energy expended over the next 24-48 hours than with traditional cardio training. Result… more calories burned.
