Are you trying to lose side fat? Try this instead!

Now, you may have gotten tired of doing those love handles or side bend exercises at the gym however, that stubborn side fat doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Right?

Does that sound familiar? Well, fret not! In this article, you’ll learn a practical & science-based approach to losing love handles.

First things first, side fat is just like fat on any other area of your body. There’s nothing you can specifically perform, to get rid of just that layer of fat.

How your body stores fat is determined by factors such as genes, hormones & gender, and how your body loses fat is also determined by factors beyond your control.

Simply put, the process of losing fat from your body will be randomized. You can’t do much. So what you can do instead?

1. Create a negative energy balance or calorie deficit

Either by expending more calories or/and by eating fewer calories.

How to expend more calories?

a. Increase your physical activity

But get the basics first and understand how your body burns calories.

i. BMR/RMR – These are the calories that are required for internal body functions. Meaning, that even if you don’t move an inch, how many calories your body will burn is BMR. It is also called Resting metabolic rate. You can increase this by building muscle but we’ll get to that in a minute.

ii. Thermic effect of food – The energy that is spent to digest the food you eat. Protein foods usually have a higher thermic effect of food, but in the overall scheme of things to lose fat, this won’t matter much.

iii. EAT or exercise activity thermogenesis – This is the active workouts you do such as resistance training, cardio, playing sports, etc.

iv. Last is, NEAT or non-exercise activity thermogenesis – Now, this is an area that can significantly increase your calorie spent. Any physical activity other than EAT will come here such as walking, household chores, etc. Just moving around basically. The idea is to move more and spend more calories. This will have a significant impact on your fat loss journey.

The good thing about NEAT is that a person of any age and body composition can do this easily.

The second step to create a negative energy balance is

b. Decreasing calories consumed

Consuming less than your maintenance (calories where weight remains the same) will help you stay in a calorie deficit.

How do you do that?

1. Find your maintenance calories using an online calculator
2. Started by eating 200-300 calories less than maintenance.

Let’s say your maintenance calories come out to be 2000, start eating 1700 calories.

But what to eat in these 1700 calories is also very important.

Here are a few strategies for that as well because eating less food isn’t easy for everyone. Hence, making the right food choices is absolutely important.

1. Consume protein in the range of 1.2-1.8 g/kg of body weight. So if your weight is 80kg, your minimum protein intake should be 96g daily. Two reasons for this – (a) protein helps preserve muscle during fat loss and (b) it is a high-satiety food, will save you from unnecessary cravings and help you eat less.
2. Now, distribute the remaining calories in complex carbohydrates & healthy fats.  Use a food scale to quantify your food.

After a negative energy balance is created, the next step is

2. Resistance training

Remember we talked about increasing the RMR above, this is how you do that. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue that burns calories all day, even at rest. So build muscle!

Improve your muscle mass by performing all major muscle group exercises at least twice a week.

If you have three days, do full body workouts. If you have 4 days, perform upper body lower body split and if you have 5 or 6 days, push, pull, and leg is a good split for you.

Secondly, other than the strength gains & plethora of other physiological benefits, when you lose fat from the body, your results will look far more aesthetically pleasing.

So to summarize, negative energy balance & optimal protein will help lose fat, and resistance training will help preserve and build muscle and bring aesthetically pleasing results.

Keep tracking your progress, and remember, consistency & long-term changes in one’s lifestyle are the keys to losing fat and sustaining it.

Research conducted by Anmol Abraham