Love Handles in Men: The Cause + How to Get Rid of Them (17 Ways)

Are you a man struggling with love handles (also called love handles), that annoying fat that sits just above your hips? It sounds so cute, as if it's a good thing your partner can hold on to your excess belly and hip fat. Unfortunately, there's nothing cute about it, and every man wants to get rid of it as quickly as possible. In many cases, love handles also go hand in hand with man boobs.

Although it's a difficult type of fat to lose, you can definitely do something about your love handles. But endless sit-ups and hours of running on the treadmill won't solve the problem. With diet, lifestyle, and the right exercise, you can get rid of your love handles for good.

To find out how best to get rid of your love handles, it is good to look at the causes.

Research shows a link between hormones and fat storage, and therefore also love handles in men. Low testosterone levels play a role. As you age (from the age of 20 onwards), testosterone levels decline.

More stress (cortisol causes you to produce less testosterone. The lower the testosterone in the blood, the more abdominal fat is produced. [1]

You can naturally increase your testosterone levels while lowering your estrogen levels with The Testo Plan. This scientifically proven step-by-step plan is easy to follow and helps reduce love handles.

A little stress isn't so bad, but most people experience stress for extended periods of time. This chronic stress undermines your health in many ways. One of these is an increase in the hormones cortisol and adrenaline.

Both of these hormones play a role in the development of obesity, because they influence appetite and the storage of body fat.

Your eating habits also play a role. Processed foods, an excess of carbohydrates and sugars, in particular, can easily lead to the production of excess fat, especially belly fat. [2]

Love handles can be caused by eating too much sugar (such as in cookies, candy, and sweetened drinks), fast carbohydrates, and other processed foods like pizza and fried foods.

This diet causes your blood sugar levels to rise and fall rapidly, which has a huge impact on your testosterone levels. Chronic elevated blood sugar also makes it impossible to burn fat.

Your body uses blood sugar first.

Many men who want to get rid of their love handles try to do so by doing sit-ups and crunches with iron discipline. But most overweight people don't exercise enough and do little to no strength training.

Local fat burning is not possible.

To burn fat, you need to weigh more throughout the day, do full body workouts (and not focus on one specific part of your body), and lift heavy weights.

Lifting heavy weights increases testosterone levels, which helps burn belly and hip fat.

Sleep is crucial for achieving and maintaining a healthy weight. A lack of proper sleep increases cortisol and inhibits testosterone production.

During sleep, hormone levels that influence appetite are also regulated. A disruption in these levels can make you feel hungry more quickly and overeat.

Sleeping longer and better means you'll feel less hungry during the day. And you'll also have less time to eat because you sleep longer.

Of course, you can pay €5,000 to have your love handles removed by a plastic surgeon. The easy way.

The downside is that the love handles will return within a few months or years. It's expensive.

That's why I've compiled a list of 17 ways for you to help reduce love handles. These methods are primarily focused on increasing your testosterone levels, improving your health, and burning more energy than you use.

It seems hard to believe that eating more fat can help you lose excess body fat. But healthy fats have certain benefits that can help you lose weight.

The principle is that you replace all foods that have low nutritional value with products that contain healthy, unprocessed fats. Research shows that people who eat a diet rich in these types of unprocessed fats have an easier time losing weight than those who eat a low-fat diet. [3]

Products like nuts, oily fish, avocados, and olive oil are very filling and also have a sky-high nutritional value. So try to incorporate more of these into your diet, for example, by adding avocado chunks to a salad or using salmon as a sandwich spread.

Of course, don't overdo it, because it remains a high-calorie food.

It's probably no news to you that stress is bad for your body. But stress also negatively impacts your body weight. Stress triggers the production of the stress hormone cortisol.

More stress means less testosterone.

Research shows that this hormone promotes obesity and stimulates the storage of fat around the abdomen. Therefore, it can also promote the formation of love handles. [4]

Adrenaline affects your appetite. It's no wonder people who experience a lot of stress eat more. And you usually choose high-calorie foods like chips, chocolate, and fast food.

That urge to eat is often irresistible, quickly leaving you on the couch with a bag of chips. Then you regret it.

To get rid of love handles, you need more relaxation and peace of mind. Saying "no" more often, meditating daily, and scheduling enough time for yourself can help.

Even low-intensity exercise helps immediately reduce stress.

A good night's sleep can contribute to reducing belly fat, and therefore also love handles, in several ways. Sleep helps restore hormone levels. If you sleep poorly, stress hormones build up. This leads to lower testosterone and increased body fat.

Sleep also influences several other hormones, namely leptin and ghrelin. Leptin is the hormone that makes you feel full, while ghrelin triggers hunger. Poor sleep disrupts this balance. This can lead to increased cravings during the day, food cravings, and sudden hunger pangs after a meal.

There are many natural ways to sleep better. Diet, lifestyle, and stress reduction play a crucial role. A natural sleep aid that supports natural sleep can also help you relax and sleep more soundly.

One of the most important things to do if you want to get rid of your love handles (or body fat anywhere else) is to cut out sugar. This means added sugar, such as in sports drinks, candy, cookies, chocolate, and soda.

Eating too much sugar is the root cause of many health problems, such as diabetes and heart disease, as well as obesity. Consuming too much sugar leads to chronically elevated blood sugar levels and insulin fluctuations, leading to increased belly and hip fat [5] .

This type of food is also called "empty food." It contains no nutrients, and you eat it solely for the taste.

It's therefore advisable to eliminate refined sugars from your diet. Choose unprocessed foods and make something tasty with them. This way, you'll nourish your body with the right nutrients while enjoying a delicious meal.

Also be careful with white bread, white pasta, and other forms of "fast carbohydrates." More on that in point 7.

Eating more protein can help you lose weight and get rid of those love handles. First, protein digests more slowly than carbohydrates, making you feel full for longer. This means you'll feel less hungry and less inclined to snack.

Secondly, studies show that protein-rich foods can effectively help you lose belly fat [6] . Protein stimulates the body to burn body fat without losing muscle mass.

In addition, a high-protein diet helps you maintain a healthy weight after weight loss. It's therefore advisable to include more protein-rich foods in your diet, such as eggs, fish, legumes, poultry, and meat. Choose organic and grass-fed meat if you enjoy meat.

If you want to do something about your love handles, a crucial step is to drink less alcohol. Alcohol is one of the causes of excess weight and body fat, which tends to accumulate around the waist.

Another disadvantage of alcohol is that it stimulates the appetite. Drinking alcohol makes you feel hungry faster. Most people snack a lot when they drink, which (unknowingly) leads to even more calories.

Your body can't store pure alcohol and burns it immediately. Because of this, anything you eat while drinking is almost immediately stored as body fat.

Enjoying an alcoholic drink occasionally isn't harmful. But try to limit it to special occasions, or only have a glass of beer or wine on weekends.

If you know that you have difficulty keeping to moderation, it might be better to stop drinking.

Do you love white bread, white rice, and pasta? These simple carbohydrates aren't very filling, so you'll quickly get hungry and start searching for something tasty.

Complex carbohydrates, found in whole-wheat bread, pasta and rice, oatmeal, and beans, help you feel full longer. These carbohydrates are also absorbed more slowly, keeping blood sugar levels more stable. This can help you snack less and therefore lose weight.

Replacing simple carbohydrates with complex ones can therefore help get rid of excess body fat on the hips and stomach.

Many people who want to lose weight think it's important to exercise intensively. However, it's better to do gentle exercise that gets your heart rate up, but not too much. As soon as you start lifting weights, you're already doing cardio.

Intense cardio training causes stress in the body. This, in turn, leads to a decrease in testosterone, which actually increases the risk of love handles in men. Therefore, avoid running or intensive cycling.

Take more walks and cycle more easily. Combine this with heavy strength training.

Besides moderate-intensity daily exercise, strength training should also be part of your exercise routine. This can significantly contribute to reducing or eliminating love handles in men.

Strength training works your muscles and increases testosterone and growth hormone production. This stimulates your muscles to grow.

The more muscle you have, the more calories your body will burn. Strength training also boosts your metabolism, making it run a bit faster. This also helps with weight loss.

Combining strength training with other forms of exercise is very effective when you want to lose weight. So, in addition to walking or cycling, try doing some strength training regularly.

If you want to get rid of your love handles, fiber is your friend. Fiber-rich foods help you feel fuller longer. This is partly because they absorb a lot of water and fill your stomach and intestines. Fiber also can't be digested, which slows down digestion.

Fiber also stabilizes blood sugar levels, and the beneficial bacteria in your intestines use fiber as food. Healthy gut flora helps you lose weight and feel better about yourself.

Healthy foods rich in fiber include nuts, vegetables, fruits, and beans. An added benefit is that these foods also contain many valuable nutrients.

Many people focus their training on the part of their body where they have the most fat. That's why women do glute workouts and men do sit-ups. But this isn't the most effective way to exercise and lose fat.

Research shows that training a specific body part doesn't make you lose more fat there. By training your entire body, you engage more muscles and burn more calories. This will result in burning fat all over your body.

Full body HIIT workouts are great ways to lose fat in the most troublesome areas of the body [8] . More on this in point 16.

Not drinking enough water causes stress in your body. Furthermore, mild dehydration causes fatigue, which can lead to a lack of motivation. By drinking enough water daily, you immediately improve your motivation, energy levels, and metabolism.

The way you eat can also contribute to obesity and the development of love handles in men. If your attention is focused elsewhere than on your food (for example, on your email, the television, or a computer game), you're more likely to eat too quickly and too much.

Because you are distracted, you are not aware of the signals your body is giving you: that you are hungry or that you are full. Research shows that obese women who ate mindfully were able to lose more weight than women who did not [9] .

Mindful eating gives you control over your eating habits. It teaches you to listen to your body, which prevents overeating and helps you lose weight. So eat at the table and leave your smartphone and TV off.

The healthiest food is pure and unprocessed. In factories, food is ground, separated, heated, and treated with chemicals. This causes food to lose a large portion of its nutrients.

Of course, you have a busy schedule and don't have time to spend hours in the kitchen. But cooking with fresh vegetables and unprocessed meat or fish doesn't take hours. And it's the best and easiest way to get rid of your love handles.

Research shows that people who regularly eat ready-made meals (both those from the supermarket and take-away meals from restaurants) have more belly fat than those who don't [9] .

In just 20 minutes, you can prepare a healthy, fresh meal. Use fresh vegetables, legumes, fish, meat, or poultry. It's also recommended to choose healthy snacks throughout the day, such as nuts, seeds, and fruit. These provide valuable nutrients.

Staying active is good for your body in several ways. It stimulates blood circulation and helps keep your muscles and bones healthy. But regular exercise also helps you burn more calories throughout the day.

This can also stimulate fat burning and help you lose excess body fat. Research increasingly shows how harmful it is to sit for long periods of time. Unfortunately, most people have sedentary jobs.

Sitting all day increases your risk of being overweight. We're not meant to sit. A study of 276 people found that every 15 minutes of extra sitting time led to a 0.13 cm increase in waist circumference [10] .

Alternate 30 minutes of sitting with 2-3 minutes of walking. This isn't just good for losing fat, it's also good for sharpening your mind. Your brain also responds well to "less sitting, more walking."

HIIT training is popular, and for good reason. It's a highly effective way to train, developing both endurance and strength in a short time. And it's also a good idea if you want to tackle those love handles.

HIIT training (the abbreviation stands for High Intensity Intermittent training) involves alternating periods of explosive, intensive training with periods of rest and recovery.

Research shows that HIIT is highly effective and can help you lose body fat, especially belly fat. If you're looking for HIIT training, you can do so at the gym. But you can also easily train at home. Search online for fun workouts and get started.

Another thing to pay attention to is when you eat. Many people unconsciously eat throughout the day. Intermittent fasting is an eating style that limits the hours you can eat. Normally, you eat your meals over a 15-hour period. With intermittent fasting, you shorten that window, for example, to 8 or 6 hours.

It's not so much about what you eat (although it's obviously best to make healthy choices), but about when you eat. Generally, people eat fewer calories this way.

Intermittent fasting also offers many health benefits. For example, it stimulates autophagy, makes you more insulin sensitive, and forces your body to burn fat instead of carbohydrates.

Make sure that you get enough calories during the periods when you eat.

Generally speaking, you can reduce love handles by reducing stress, eating more unprocessed foods, and alternating low-intensity exercise with intense strength training. This will help you manage your blood sugar levels, boost your testosterone levels, and reduce the production of stress hormones. This will prevent fat storage on your hips, and you'll see results quickly.

One of the most powerful ways to reduce love handles is the Testoplan. This scientifically proven step-by-step plan helps you increase your testosterone levels while lowering your estrogen levels.