Last week we talked about how to get rid of fat in your problem areas. This week I want to take you beyond the ‘theory’ of how to do it and actually show you how you should eat and work out to get rid of a common problem area that people often ask me about - muffin tops (a.k.a love handles)

Get Your Nutrition On Track

The first thing that you need to do if you want to get rid of your muffin top is to get your nutrition fixed up. This is because the fat that gets stored around your hips (i.e. muffin top) is generally caused by high levels of insulin in your body. This is usually as a result of eating too many processed carbs or sugary snacks.

So I would say that definitely the first and most important step to getting rid of a muffin top is to cut out as much ‘junk food’ as you can and to make sure that your carb intake is restricted to fruits and veggies instead. Also, if you’re going to eat more sugary or starchy carbs, make sure that you only eat them immediately after exercising as your body is less likely to store them as fat at that time.

How To Structure Your Workouts To Lose Love Handles

Next, let’s talk about how you should structure your workouts to get rid of those love handles.

As far as exercises go, I would say that using whole body interval training is definitely the best way to go. Sure, you can add in a few exercises that target that area specifically, but since spot reduction is not really possible you’d be better off doing a full body routine that will burn fat from your entire body all at once.

So, here are some examples of great total-body exercises that I would recommend:

• Squats
• Squat thrusters
• Deadlifts
• Lunges - static, reverse, forward, and lateral
• Planks
• Side planks
• Mountain climbers
• Cross body mountain climbers
• Exercise ball rollouts
• Bent over dumbell rows
• Bodyweight rows
• Squat to rows
• Seated rows
• Pushups - all different grips and hand placements
• Standing cable presses
• Chin ups
• Push presses
• Inchworms

Those are just a few of my fave exercises for total body fat loss. If you want to see a list of over 50 awesome exercises you can slot into your workouts to ramp up your fat burning to amazing levels, be sure to download my free functional training for fat loss ebook.

Sample Fat Loss Programs For You To Try That Will Banish Your Muffin Top For Good

Now, if you wanted to put these exercises together into a fat loss program, you could do one of two things:

1) You could either string a bunch of those exercises together into a fat burning circuit, or

2) You could put a bunch of those exercises together as an interval training workout.

To illustrate the difference between the two, here are some sample workouts (one circuit workout and one interval training workout) that would burn fat from your whole body while also really hammering the side of your core (where the muffin top is):

1) Circuit workout:

Directions:
a) Do 12 reps of each of the following exercises and then move on to the next exercise in the circuit immediately with no rest in between.
b) At the end of the circuit, rest for 60-90 seconds.
c) Repeat the above steps 3 times each for a total of 3 total body fat blasting circuits.

• Squat thrusters
• Pushups
• Reverse lunges (12 reps for each legs, do both legs before moving on to rows)
• Bent over dumbell rows
• Cross body mountain climbers

2) Interval training workout

Directions:
a) Perform as many reps of the following exercises as you can (or for side planks, hold yourself in the position) for a 30 second duration
b) After completing each exercise, rest for 30 seconds
c) After resting, move on to the next exercise in the workout and once again complete as many reps as you can in 30 seconds
d) After completing the lateral lunges, rest for 30 seconds and then start the process again from the bodyweight squats
e) Keep repeating the above steps over 5 times in a row for a total workout of 15 minutes.

• Bodyweight squats
• Side planks
• Lateral lunges

Notes:
With the side planks and lateral lunges, stick to just one side of your body per set. So for example the first time through this 3 exercises, you would hold a side plank on your left side for 30 seconds and you would do as many lateral lunges on your left leg as you could in 30 seconds. Then, the next time through, you would hold your side plank on your right side for 30 seconds and do lateral lunges onto your right leg.

You want to make sure that your first set is on your weaker side so that you end up doing 1 extra set on your weaker side as opposed to your stronger side. So if you’re right handed, you would do a side plank and lateral lunge to your left to start off with.

It’s That Simple

That’s just a little example of how to plan a workout so that it maximizes your fat burning. If you make sure that you’re eating well and do total body interval or circuit training, you’ll find that not only do you lose fat from your muffin top, you’ll lose fat from everywhere else too!

If you have any questions or if you’d like me to film videos of these workouts or explain anything in more detail, make sure to let me know in the comments.

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