---
title: 'Can''t Lose Your "Love Handles"? (THIS ALWAYS WORKS)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=1uu4E8xtY7M'
video_id: '1uu4E8xtY7M'
date: 2026-07-28
duration_sec: 656
---

# Can't Lose Your "Love Handles"? (THIS ALWAYS WORKS)

> Source: [Can't Lose Your "Love Handles"? (THIS ALWAYS WORKS)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=1uu4E8xtY7M)

## Summary

This video provides a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to losing love handles and achieving a leaner waistline. It emphasizes that fat loss starts with nutrition, not exercise, and introduces a simple calorie calculation method to kickstart the process.

### Key Points

- **Start with Nutrition** [00:10] — Losing love handles begins with what you eat, not exercise. Calculate your daily calorie target: multiply body weight by 15 if you have visible abs, or by 12 if you don't.
- **Two-Week Testing Period** [00:40] — Follow a consistent eating plan with similar foods for two weeks to accurately determine your maintenance calories. Consistency ensures accuracy due to the thermic effect of food.
- **Adjust Calories as Needed** [01:49] — If not losing weight, reduce calories by 10% (e.g., from 2000 to 1800). Once maintenance is found, create a deficit of 200-500 calories for fat loss.
- **Walking Over Running** [03:00] — Walking is more sustainable and effective for fat loss than high-intensity exercises. A 180 lb person burns 300 calories walking an hour at 3.5 mph.
- **Visual V-Taper Through Shoulders and Lats** [04:37] — Build wider shoulders (middle delts) and lats to create a V-taper illusion, making the waist appear smaller. Exercises: lateral raises, lat pulldowns, pull-ups.
- **Train Abs and Obliques** [06:29] — Ab exercises like crunches and rotational moves (e.g., hanging leg raises) help define abs and obliques, framing the waistline. Add resistance for better results.
- **Don't Quit – Love Handles Are Last to Go** [09:58] — Love handles are stubborn, but consistent effort pays off. Use progress elsewhere (e.g., visible abs) as motivation to keep going.

### Conclusion

Losing love handles requires a combination of proper nutrition, consistent calorie tracking, sustainable activity like walking, and targeted muscle building to create a V-taper. Persistence is key, as this area is often the last to slim down.

## Transcript

Do you ever see that cartoon of the two
diamond miners? One's only about halfway
there, but whereas the one on the bottom
is quitting. You don't want to be that
guy. Any discussion of losing body fat
or specifically what's going on down
here in terms of the love handles is
going to have to start not down here,
but up here. We're talking about what
you're putting in your mouth. That is to
take two simple numbers, 12 and 15. If
you look in the mirror, if you have
visible abs, then what you're going to
do is take your body weight and multiply
it by 15. If you do not have visible
abs, you take your body weight and you
multiply it by 12. And what that gives
you is a simple starting point, a
caloric total that you should be
targeting each day. So, how long does
this last? Just two weeks. If you follow
an eating plan, which should roughly be
the same types of foods every day or so
for the next two weeks, you can identify
a caloric starting point that you can
now start to make adjustments to that
will give you the confidence of knowing
you're moving in the right direction to
ultimately losing those love handles and
getting the physique that you want. I
mentioned eating roughly the same foods.
There's a reason why. Because all foods
are not created equally. If you eat a
steak at home, but then you go out to
Applebees and eat steak, the one you had
at home is probably 500 calories or so,
grilled nicely on your backyard grill.
The one at Applebee's with all the extra
butter and sauces they throw on it is
probably closer to 1,800 calories. So,
in order to be very accurate in
determining what that maintenance level
of calories is, you want to make sure
you're giving it accurate information.
The other thing is something called the
thermic effect of food. Proteins come at
a higher cost calorically for our bodies
just to even break them down. So if you
start to shift the amount of protein
that you eat versus carbohydrates during
this time, you're going to maybe lose
some of that accuracy. So again, trying
to eat the same type of foods during
this twoe testing period is really
crucial. Once you have that number, then
the only thing left to do is just watch
and see what happens. Now, if you find
that you're not losing weight, you just
adjust your calories down by 10%. So if
you're at 2,000 calories, drop them by
another 200 and then once again
reassess. Once you've reached a level of
maintenance where you're not gaining or
losing weight over the course of the two
weeks, well, then you can start to
adjust from there. Whether it be very
aggressive by about 500 calorie deficit
or so, or maybe less aggressive 200 or
300 calories. The point is you can start
to ensure that you're actually getting
into that hypocchloric state required to
lose the body fat to put you on the
right path to losing those love handles.
Hey guys, real quick, I want to give you
something for watching this video. If
the love handles aren't really
determined by the exercises that you do,
what else might be? Well, if you have a
stomach that sticks out further than you
wanted to, it could be that you're
actually doing the wrong exercises
because there's a specific muscle that
will help that to be pulled back in. And
I put together a complete routine, 22
days to a flat stomach that you can have
for free just by going over ax.com/flat
stomach. I think you're going to find it
helpful. And again, it's yours totally
free. Now, back to the video. Now, the
good news is creating that deficit
that's capable of giving you that
tapered waistline isn't all the
responsibility of what you put in your
mouth, but actually the activity that's
going on down here.
No, Jesse, not that kind of activity.
You actually don't have to run. As a
matter of fact, you might want to start
walking some more because that's much
more effective when we're talking about
creating fat loss. Why? Because it's
more sustainable. A lot of us find the
task of running to be either too hard on
our joints or too demanding to repeat
multiple times during the week. But
simply taking an extra walk throughout
the day or multiple times in a week is
actually much more obtainable and
achievable. So what are we talking
about? Well, a 180 lb person can burn an
extra 300
calories by walking for an hour at a
pace of just 3 and a half miles hour.
That's not really that fast, but again,
it's something that we could easily do.
You can take the stairs or you can park
your car further away. We can
deliberately try to get more steps in
our day, realizing that with every extra
step we take, we're burning a few
additional calories that will help to
contribute to that deficit that is
required to help you to get to those
leaner levels of body fat. Now, I know
what you're thinking. But Jeff, doesn't
the extra intensity of the HIT training
actually lead to more calories burned?
That's actually not how it works.
Because even if you took a hard
exercise, one of the hardest, a burpee,
and performed it for a minute, you're
going to burn 15 calories, which is much
more than you do in a minute of walking,
but how many minutes are you sustaining
burpees for? Like, could you even do
burpees for 10 minutes straight? Likely
not. So, the 10 minutes at 15 calories
burned is only 150 calories burned,
whereas again, we talked about 330 in a
more sustained, low intensity effort
like walking. And this is actually
easier work, so it's more likely you're
gonna actually do it. Now, what if there
was a cheat code or a hack that allowed
you to visually attack that waistline of
yours through exercise that didn't
involve a single exercise for your
waistline? Specifically, no side bends.
Don't ever do a side bend. What I'm
talking about here, guys, is actually
fixing the appearance of that waistline
of yours by visually creating a wider
physique through the use of exercises
that target your shoulders, specifically
your middle delts and your lats. So, you
get more of that visible vtaper from the
top to the bottom. You actually create
what we call this dorito chip shape. And
the reason we get this is because we get
the middle delts becoming more prominent
and we get that tapering with down
towards the waistline from a
well-developed set of lats. Well, you're
going to need to do some exercises that
do that. And some of my favorite ways to
target the middle delts are simply with
lateral raises. And there's a lot of
ways we can do this. We can either do it
with lighter weights with more focused
tension on the delts by performing
slower repetitions with really good form
and no substitution with other muscle
groups. or we can do something more
explosive and powerful like a cheat
lateral. When it comes to the back,
you're going to want to focus on the
exercises that actually train more of
the lats rather than the upper back or
the thickness of the back. And these
exercises are really more of those
vertical pulling exercises like a lat
pull down or an underhand pull down or
even a pull-up or a variation of a
pull-up. You can even do exercises like
the row as long as you're keeping that
elbow tucked tight to your side or even
something more lat specific like a
straight arm push down. All these
exercises do a great job of training the
lats to give you more of that visible
vtaper and again create that illusion at
least while you're working on the rest
of the steps here to get a more broad
top and more tapered waistline that will
get you liking more of what you see in
the mirror while you move on to step
four. And so step four is where a lot of
you, let's face it, probably skip
forward to because you wanted to find
out how do I deal with this right here.
Again, it starts with all the stuff we
discussed already. But if this was in a
museum, this would be the part you'd
likely focus on. Your eyes would go
right here. And there's a reason for it
because the six-pack kind of tends to do
that. Look, even somebody with
definitive love handles looks instantly
better when you start to etch in some
abs because visibly they actually happen
to soften the appearance of those softer
love handles by giving you something
else to look at. But they also do
something much more important than that.
This right here becomes the inspiration
to keep going in order to get to the
point where you can actually lose those
love handles. See, what men experience
is something called top-down fat loss.
Meaning when we start to lose weight, we
start to see it first in our face and
then in our neck and then usually
through our chest and then it starts to
work its way down into that upper row of
abs. And when you can even start to see
just that top row, you become inspired
to keep going because a lot of us stop
long before that point. Do you ever see
that cartoon of the two diamond miners
where they're digging away trying to get
to the diamonds? One's only about
halfway there, but he's really eagerly
going and chopping away. Whereas the one
on the bottom is quitting not knowing
that he was only about six inches away
from finally hitting pay dirt. You don't
want to be that guy. So what does that
mean? We need the inspiration. Nobody
keeps going without something that
continues to drive them. And as you
start to see that top row of abs, it
really behooves you to make sure that
you're doing something to train the abs
so they actually look good. So this is
where you want to start doing some ab
exercises. So, we're talking about
exercises like a classic crunch where
you're moving those shoulders towards
the fixed pelvis or maybe a crunch pull
down where once again you're using some
additional weight here but you're moving
towards a fixed pelvis or even something
like a power up which requires more of a
situp but you're doing it once again
with just moving your shoulders towards
the fixed pelvis. And if you're looking
to get rid of those love handles, guess
what? You're going to have to train the
obliques. Because if we look at that
picture of art once again, what would
happen if I actually got rid of the
frame around those abs?
It just doesn't look as impressive.
Because when it comes to the artwork,
your obliques are framing in your abs.
They're actually giving you that visual
tapering that makes your abs look a lot
more impressive. But as I said, you're
going to have to train them. But this is
where we have a problem because a lot of
people think the big myth out there that
training your obliques gives you a big,
thick, blocky waist. No, that's only if
you're building your obliques up and you
still have them covered by a lot of fat.
Because you can see right here, when you
get rid of that fat, those obliques look
really, really good and really
impressive. So, when we're talking about
training the obliques, you have to do
rotational exercises. And I'm going to
tell you this, the faster you can move
away from just the body weight exercises
and add some resistance, the more these
muscles in here are going to respond to
start shaping up and carving in and
giving you that really tapered
waistline. So, I'm talking about
exercises like this to start where
you're just using rotation either from
the bottom up or from the top down, but
then moving into some form of resistance
like a band where you could do
rotational work like this or even using
the weight of your own legs and doing
hanging leg raises like this. Again,
building up to this if you can't start
here is fine. You could actually do this
exercise laying on the ground and still
getting that rotational work in.
Anything we can do to incorporate the
rotation of the pelvis while we're
moving is going to help us to start
training those obliques. Now, here's the
other thing I don't want you to do.
Don't be one of those diamond digger
quitters, right? Because remember what I
said. It's this area that's the last to
come off. You could lose all the fat
from here and it starts to work its way
all the way down. It's that stubborn
area around your waistline that's so
hard to get rid of. But don't quit. Use
the motivation you got from starting to
see some of the progress elsewhere and
some of these tricks to visually
tapering that waistline to keep you
motivated to keep going, to keep digging
and chipping away until you hit that pay
dirt. Because ultimately, there's nobody
walking the face of the earth that's
genetically disposed to always having
fat all around their waist. If you stick
to the plan, this fat is not unlike any
other fat in your body. It will
ultimately come off, and when it does,
you'll look much better for it. If
you're looking for more help on
nutrition, then make sure you check out
this video over here where I cover two
strategies to help you actually speed up
your fat loss. And if you're looking to
pair down those ab exercises to just
two, then check out the only two ab
exercises you need here. Guys, remember
to turn your notifications and subscribe
if you haven't already done so. Check
out our full programs and meal plans
available over at athletex.com. All
right, guys. Good luck.