The Best Ways to Lose Love Handles

The term "love handles" refers a layer of fat over the oblique abdominal muscles, an area often over-looked in a typical exercise routine. Toning that area requires a combination of cardiovascular and weight training. The idea of "spot training" a particular area of the body is a fallacy, according to the American Council of Exercise, so focus instead on improving your metabolism.

Proper Diet

• To lose weight around the obliques, take in fewer calories than you consume each day by reducing your intake of carbohydrate and starchy foods, and sticking to lean meats consisting of primarily chicken, eggs, and fish. A study from the New England Journal of Medicine published in 2009 found that "reduced-calorie diets result in clinically meaningful weight loss."

Cardiovascular Training

• Aerobic exercise performed to reduce fat show the most effectiveness when done on an empty stomach in the morning, as it involves the body's "fat stores," as opposed to the calories and carbohydrates from a prior meal. According to Jade Teta, ND, CSCS, research has demonstrated that "exercisers who exercised on an empty stomach burned 94.3 more fat calories than the groups that had meals prior to exercise."

  When combined with interval training, a method of aerobic exercise that involves approximately 30-second bursts of intensity (such as a wind sprint) alternated with short periods of aerobic rest (such as jogging and walking), your metabolism dramatically increases, which in turn leads to fat loss. A 2008 study by the University of Guelph's Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences showed this effect, finding that the metabolic rate of skeletal muscle increased due to the introduction of regular interval training.

Weight Training

• You can involve the obliques in an exercise routine through a direct or indirect route. An example of a direct exercise would be the twist crunch, performed by lying down as if about to execute a regular crunch, but instead you aim the right elbow toward the left knee until the right shoulder blade is off the ground. In the next repetition, the left elbow aims toward the right knee.

  A more indirect approach uses compound exercises that involve a number of muscle groups at one time. A good example of a compound exercise that involves the entire core abdomen area, which includes the obliques, would be the squat. You perform this exercise at a gym squat rack, placing the center of the weight bar behind your head and between the trapezius and shoulder blades. Keep your feet roughly shoulder-width apart, head facing forward, and push the chest out with shoulders rolled backward. While maintaining that form, bend your knees until your thighs and rear are parallel to the ground, and then return to the standing position.