Do This 15-Minutes Love Handles Workout 4 Times a Week to Get Rid of Your Muffin Top

This love handles workout is effective because it not only aims at strengthening and tightening your core, but it also serves as a HIIT(High-Intensity Interval Training) workout.

Love Handles Workout and HIIT

Just strengthening your abs isn’t enough to get rid of those love handles. You need to lose fat and, as we talked about in How Intermittent Fasting and Fasting Mimicking Can Help You Lose Belly Fat Fast, you can spot reduce fat. However, there are many things you can do that will help. One of them is high-intensity interval training. You may have heard of HIIT before. It includes short bursts of high-intensity activity alternated with short recovery periods. HIIT has many benefits.

Benefits of HIIT

HIIT workouts are anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes long, so they work great when you are short on time. Not only they save you time, but they will give you the same benefits as moderate-intensity exercises or even superior benefits. Here are some examples of the benefits you will gain:

  • You will burn more calories. HIIT can burn 25-30% more calories than steady-state exercise.
  • Your metabolism will remain elevated for longer after your workout, more so than jogging and weight training. Two minutes of HIIT can increase your metabolism over the next 24 hours as much as 30 minutes of running.
  • It will help you gain more muscle mass. Not only is building muscle mass is important to maintain a higher metabolism as muscles burn more fat than fat, but it’s also an important means to achieving overall health and fighting the natural muscle loss that comes with aging. Many HIIT exercises recruit your muscles all over your body.
  • HIIT improves your endurance. Training 20 minutes four times a week will improve oxygen consumption by 9%.

A Love Handles Workout That Combines HIIT and Core Strength

As you can see, a combination of HIIT and core strength would be a well-rounded approach to get rid of your love handles because not only it takes care of your overall fat loss in the most effective way, but also it will tighten these core muscles to help you define your waistline. Today’s love handles workout will include four exercises. You will perform each exercise for 30 seconds and take a 10-second break in between. You will repeat the circuit four times.

Navasana Twist

  1. Sit up by bringing your knees and feet together. Place your hands together.
  2. Come down, exhale and twist, alternating sides. Modify by remaining in the seated position and taking your hands from side to side.
  3. Repeat for 30 seconds.

Mountain Climber

  1. Come to your high plank position.
  2. Drive one knee to your chest and take it back down.
  3. Alternate for 30 seconds.

Plank Rotations

  1. Come into a side plank on your right side with your feet in front of each other.
  2. Get into the front plank position (possibly adding a push-up to make the exercise more difficult).
  3. Come into a side plank on your left side.
  4. Repeat for 30 seconds.

High Knees

  1. Stand with your feet hip-width apart. Lift up your left knee to your chest.
  2. Alternate knees with explosive movements.
  3. Repeat as fast as you can bringing your knees as high as you can.
  4. To make the exercise more challenging, bring your knee to the side and touch your foot on each side.
  5. Repeat for 30 seconds.

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Love Handles Workout Video

What Causes Love Handles?

Most of you want to get rid of your love handles because they don’t look good, but don’t forget they may be symptoms of other underlying issues you need to address. Fat accumulates all over your body when you consume more energy than your body needs and some areas, like your belly, buttock and thighs, tend to accumulate fat faster than other areas. Before I let you go today, let’s just address some other factors that may compound the issue of belly fat so you can remediate them:

  • Too much cortisol: Cortisol is a stress hormone that can make weight loss more difficult and increase belly fat.
  • Age: As you age you tend to accumulate fat faster because your metabolism is slowing down.
  • Lack of physical activity: A sedentary lifestyle promotes weight gain.
  • Diet: Eating junk food and too much sugar will cause you to gain fat.
  • Poor sleep: Poor sleep will increase cortisol levels and cravings for junk food.
  • Untreated and undiagnosed conditions such as hypothyroidism: An underactive thyroid slows down your metabolism.

Your love handles could lead to metabolic disease (diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer) as any excessive overall body fat accumulation. Prevention is key.

Lifestyle Changes You Can Implement

Stay consistent with my love handles workout, practice intermittent fasting, and take care of yourself. Make sure you get proper sleep, stay active, eat whole foods. You can also try my Top 7 Ab Workouts for Women. I think you will enjoy the workout routine I put together!