Learning To Love Your Love Handles
Your back fat might seem like a big deal to you, and we know from experience that its incredibly dispiriting to pull on a t-shirt only to see it stretch over your spare tire. But short of signing up for lipo, it might be time to just make peace with your back fat while you do your best to get down to a healthy weight. Its just another miserable price to pay as a fat man, but know that if youre losing weight youre doing the best you can to get rid of your back fat. And rest assured that as you work on lowering your body fat, your back fat will reduce too.
The Final Word On Stubborn Fat
You cant get rid of the fat on your lower stomach, thighs, or butt by trying to target those areas with exercise.
Instead, to properly deal with any areas of stubborn fat, you are better off focusing on a combination of diet and fasted training and possibly adding in supplements like yohimbine to really maximize your results.
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A Final Tip To Help You Get Rid Of Back Fat:
Combine these exercises with a clean diet and caloric deflect. In other words, control your food intake so you are ultimately burning more calories than you are consuming. Diet plays a huge role in both a leaner back and overall physique.
Want a more structured programme and a coach to walk you through your fat burning journey? Then you can miss the Busy Yet Fit Programme at Lifehack. Good luck!
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Calorie Burning Cardio Workouts
Once youve got your nutrition under control and are managing to consistently consume 500 fewer calories per day, you will be ready to move on to the next strategy calorie burning exercise. This will allow you to burn around another 3500 calories per week. With a pound of fat containing 3500 calories, the combination of these two strategies should allow you to lose 2 pounds of fat every single week.
The best exercises to burn the most calories are those that get your body moving through a full range of motion consistently. You could do this with cardio exercises such as the treadmill, stationary cycle or rowing machine. Another option is to make use of compound exercises in the weights area of the gym that require a massive amount of energy to complete. Resistance training is also an option if it is preferred.
A great example of this is to do squats. While most people think of the squats as an exercise for your legs, it is also a tremendous calorie burner. By using a relatively light weight with high reps and low rest periods between sets, you can burn more calories than you ever would on a treadmill or rowing machine.
Dig Deeper With Lab Work
If diet, exercise and stress seem to be in place but you cant lose that excess back fat, you might need to consider some lab work to address potential root causes. When visceral fat simply wont budge, you could be dealing with hidden inflammation, insulin resistance or another hormonal imbalance. Talk with your primary doctor or an integrative doctor for blood work and stool testing to get a snapshot of your gut health. Sometimes its better to test than guess.
With these strategies, you can slowly but surely take the necessary steps to lose back fat and take control of your health. Remember its a marathon and not a sprint, so stay motivated to make small but sustainable changes.
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Strategically Use Cardio To Burn Fat Faster
The best way to include cardio in a weight loss regimen is to do as little as needed to reach your desired rate of weight loss and stay fit, and no more.
For best results . . .
- Do at least two low- to moderate-intensity cardio workouts per week of 20-to-60 minutes each.
- Do one HIIT workout per week if you enjoy it.
- Dont do more than 2-to-3 hours of cardio per week. You can do more than this, but this increases the chances of it interfering with your weightlifting workouts.
- Do your cardio and weightlifting on separate days if possible, and if you have to do them on the same day, lift weights first and try to separate the two workouts by at least 6 hours.
. . . and if you want to use cardio to target stubborn fat specifically, try combining fasted cardio with a yohimbine supplement.
Let Working Against Gravity Help You
The truth of the matter is, regardless of what you’re doing, you should only expect to lose about 0.5-1% of your body fat, at most, each week. That’s why consistency and patience are key.
We know that youre eager to reach your goals, but long-term results require long-term commitments, and thats why were here.
A WAG coach can help guide you through the process of reducing body fat in a way that works for you. You get accountability, unlimited support and access to a like-minded community that will encourage you to work toward your body composition goals.
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Include More Healthy Sources Of Fat In Your Diet
Now to reduce hunger and optimize your hormones youll also want to include more healthy sources of fat in your diet.
Fat slows the digestion process helping you stay full for longer. The other thing about that is that it simply tastes good so it helps make your diet more enjoyable and when you enjoy your meals youre more likely to actually stick to them.
Aside from the benefits of consuming enough healthy sources of fat if youre not getting enough fat in your diet youll actually negatively affect many vital hormones for fat loss.
So make sure that at least 20 to 35 percent of your daily calorie intake is coming from healthy sources of fat like avocados, olive oil, nuts, eggs and fatty fish.
About Lower Back Fat And Love Handles
This pinchable fat of your love handles and lower back is likely subcutaneous fat that sits just under the skin and can be notoriously stubborn to lose. Subcutaneous fat may be unsightly and annoying, but it’s far less dangerous than the firmer visceral fat that expands your middle.
Your love handles and low back fat may have become more noticeable lately as visceral fat widens your waistband. This fat weaves in and around your internal organs and releases inflammatory compounds that increase your risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. A good indication that you have too much dangerous visceral fat is if your waistband measures greater than 40 inches as a man or 35 inches as a woman.
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Cut Out Refined Carbohydrates
Now besides sugar youll also want to cut out refined carbohydrates. Im not one to eliminate carbs completely in fact many of my friends have been very successful even eating a higher carb diet but these refined carbs are very quickly converted to sugar right after you eat them.
When the grains are refined theyre stripped of all the bran, fiber and the nutrients.
Not only does this reduce the thermic effect of these carbs but it also speeds up the rate of digestion so its not long before youre hungry once again.
On top of that many refined carbohydrates also have additional added sugar.
A couple examples include: white bread, dough, pasta, pastries, white flour, sweets and most breakfast cereals.
Its not that you can never eat these foods but you want to do your best to limit them in your diet and stick mostly to hold natural sources of carbohydrates like for example sweet potatoes, brown rice, buckwheat and barley.
Make Sure That Youre Eating Enough Soluble Fiber
Because these foods really help fill you up and help you feel full for longer.
Foods that help you stay full help reduce your calorie intake naturally without having to feel like youre starving yourself.
A couple of examples of foods high in soluble fiber include Brussels sprouts, beans, broccoli and some grains like barley and oats.
Eating more of these high-fiber foods has been shown to help lead to fat loss in many studies.
In fact, one study showed that by increasing the amount of soluble fiber that participants ate by just 10 grams per day over the course of five years led on average to a 3.7 percent reduction of their visceral fat which is the fat stored around their midsection
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Lose Back Fat For A Lean Fit And Athletic Body
Love handles makes them sound like such a nice thing to have. But storing too much fat around your sides and lower back is a problem for a lot of men. Even if you cant see it when youre standing in front of the mirror, you always know its there.
It stops nice clothes from fitting well. It can make you self-conscious at the park, beach, swimming pool, or in the gym changing rooms.
But help is at hand! Heres what you can do if youre troubled by love handles and want to lose back fat fast!
Back Fat: The Main Cause
Back fat is generally caused by a lack of exercise, poor diet, and an idle lifestyle. It is a stubborn area to lose weight from due to its slow development.
Genetics and ageing are a natural cause of back fat. But, this can be somewhat prevented. As can developing back fat due to your lifestyle. To reduce back fat or the risk of developing it, here are a few tips:
If you struggle with motivation and consistency of a healthy active lifestyle, a personal trainer or nutrition coach may be a good option. They can help you formulate an exercise and eating plan, which can target specific areas of concern.
But, not everyone needs a personal trainer or dietician. Any person can benefit from these simple at-home exercises shown below to target back fat, as well as other stubborn areas of fat on the body.Remember that it is important to do some warm up exercices correctly before exercising. This will prevent injury and aching muscles. We know all the tips for this! Now, lets get on to the 15 best exercises to get rid of back fat:
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Weight Loss Vs Fat Loss
We’ve talked before about the difference between general weight loss and fat loss, but here’s a quick refresher.
When you start eating better and exercising, you generally start to lose weight. While a calorie deficit and aerobic, or cardio, exercise can help you shed some pounds, this weight may or may not be body fat. It could be muscle, water and even bone mass or a combination of all of the above.
The key to improving your body composition is to burn more fat while building muscle at the same time. And there are some targeted ways you can do that.
How To Measure Body Fat
The quickest way to measure body fat at home, or at your gym, is with skinfold calipers. Calipers measure the thickness of your skin, including the underlying fat mass, to give you an idea of the amount of body fat you have.
There are other ways to measure body fat too, but you can’t do them at home. You have to find a fitness center or a medical center near you that provides these services.
Some other ways to measure body fat are:
- DEXA scan
- Air Displacement Plethysmography
- Electrical Impedance Myography
- 3D Body Scanners
Keep in mind that while these methods sound really fancy, they’re not that superior to using regular old skinfold calipers. To put it into perspective, skinfold calipers have an error rate of 3.5% to 5% while DEXA scans have an error rate of about 4%
And those are pretty big percentages when you think about it. If you get a skinfold caliper measurement of 15%, that means your body fat percentage could fall anywhere between 10 and 20%, a big difference.
That’s why you should consider any body fat measurement as a way to observe trends in your body composition and measure overall progress instead of getting hung up on the exact number.
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How To Keep Motivated
“My best motivational tip is to set yourself a goal something that is going to be challenging. Lets say it’s a race, or if you like tennis, set yourself a competition that you can be in. Do something that is going to challenge you and then tell everyone youre going to do it so that you cant back out. It could be anything, you could be like, “right Im gonna do some modelling so Ive got six months to get ready.
Monday & Thursday: Upper
- 45-60 minutes of walking, running or combination of the two
- Or biking, swimming, elliptical gliding machines
The workout above is just a basic guide to getting started with a calisthenics or resistance training plan or adding cardio to your workout. For a free starter’s guide to fitness, check out the “45-Day Beginner Program,” which also will help you with motivation, basic nutrition and pictures of the exercises listed above.
Below are some abdominal exercises taken from every eBook sold on the Military.com Fitness eBook Store. Sample exercises to help build muscles of the core are the following:
Hanging knee-ups
Bring your knees as high as you can as shown.
Advanced crunch
Lie on your back with your feet straight in the air. Keep your legs straight up in the air for the advanced crunches. Cross your hands over your chest and bring your elbows to your knees by flexing your stomach. Check out “Achieve Washboard Abs” for more information.
Reverse crunch
In the same position as the regular crunch, lift your knees and butt toward your elbows. Leave your head and upper body flat on the ground. Only move your legs and butt.
Right elbow to left knee
Cross your left leg over your right leg. Flex your stomach and twist to bring your right elbow to your left knee.
Left elbow to right knee
Same as above, just switch sides. Cross your right leg over your leg. Flex your stomach and twist to bring your left elbow to your right knee.
Hip rollers
Lower-back exercise: Swimmers
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Side Planks Are Your Best Friend
While nothing can replace a healthy diet, certain exercises are better than others for targeting that pesky lower back fat. Side planks top the list, and they also have the added benefit of strengthening arms and shoulders, and are excellent for balance and coordination.
If youre new to side planks, start with just 10 seconds on each side and slowly work your way up to 30+ seconds. You can do these on your elbow or hand, and even add in hip dips once you master this exercise for more challenge.
Why Is Lower Back Fat Hard To Lose
Lower back fat is hard to lose because the fat cells in this area are more reluctant to disgorge their contents than fat cells in other areas.
While some fat cells release their stored energy readily , others are more stingy, or stubborn, such as the ones on your lower back.
Why?
To mobilize body fat, your body produces chemicals known as catecholamines.
These molecules travel through your blood and attach to receptors on fat cells, and then trigger the release of the fat stored within the cells to be burned for energy. You can think of catecholamines like little letters your body sends to your fat cells with instructions to dump their cargo, ASAP.
Fat cells have two types of receptors for catecholamines: Alpha- and beta-receptors. You can think of alpha-receptors as bitter, cantankerous mailmen who throw your bodys letters in the trash, and beta-receptors as the sweet secretaries that rush your missive through to the cell.
In other words, alpha-receptors hinder the fat-mobilizing effects of catecholamines, while beta-receptors enhance them.
And herein lies the problem with stubborn fat: its chock-full of alpha-receptors.
Fat that disappears quickly, like the stuff covering your arms and shoulders, has more beta-receptors than alpha-receptors. And stubborn fat, like the stuff covering your lower back, has more alpha-receptors than beta-receptors.
Another problem with these stubborn fat deposits relates to blood flow.
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Tactic #: Supplement With Yohimbine
Finally, there are certain supplements that have been shown to help reduce fat from your lower stomach and other stubborn areas.
One of the most effective of these is yohimbine, which studies have shown is particularly effective at targeting stubborn fat.
However, in order for it to be effective, you need to take yohimbine in a fasted state. This is because insulin actually inhibits yohimbine from working properly.
Also, I should note that yohimbine has been shown to increase blood pressure, so if you suffer from high blood pressure then you should probably avoid taking it.
In terms of specific brands, I would recommend Primaforce Yohimbine,
How Fat Accumulates In The Body
Your bodys unique distribution of fat is contingent on a multitude of variables, including ancestry and hormonal balance.
Whenever a person consumes a caloric surplus of foods, the body begins to save the extra stuff as fat. These fat cells are called adipocytes and they come in a variety of forms. Specifically, brown, white, visceral and subcutaneous fats can be found in a human beings body. Visceral fat is most dangerous in excess and also the most likely culprit for unwanted curves around your waistline. Interestingly, fat cells can be added to your body as it sees fit, but your body does not remove fat cells even when you lose weight, opting instead to drain them of their contents and keep them alive in case they are needed.
1. Hormones, Vitamins & Minerals
To better understand the situation, we should take a look at how Watch Fit explains the impact of hormones in relation to body fat: Hormones are responsible for excess fat storage, and for the lower back and torso area the ones to look at are cortisol and insulin. The publication also adds that one of the side effects that reduced insulin sensitivity presents is you guessed it lower back fat. So how do you get rid of lower back fat from this point of view? Consider the minerals and vitamins that can work wonders for this area: chromium, zinc and vitamin B complex. For more information about the vitamins and minerals you can take for love handles, we recommend consulting your nutritionist or personal doctor.
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