Fitness

So the reaction that people typically have when they find out about my job is.. well, funny. A good half of the time, its something like "Oh wow, hey, how can I get rid of my love handles??"

Well. It's not like there's an EASY button that I can provide for you. Yo mama owns that one. I'll begin by saying that I lost about 21 lbs last summer (2007), and it sure as hell wasn't easy. One of the things that made it easiER was that I was working at a law firm, and had a pretty routine day full of busywork to keep me occupied and my mind off of food. But let's recap what I did.
-I started intermittent fasting (IF), which Richard recommended to me. This is most effective when done in conjunction with weight lifting, or some sort of physical activeness. Basically, this is where you are eating for 8 hours a day and.. not for the other 16. Example: my eating hours during that summer were usually 3 pm - 11 pm. It's not easy. For those that decry the omission of breakfast, tell me why exactly you feel that way and we'll hash it out. IF also allows you to actually feel full on days that youre eating less, so that's a pro.
- Additional macronutrient breakdowns. Carbs + proteins for lift days (3 days a week) and fats + proteins for rest days. Think about what your body breaks down first, what is stored, and it'll make sense.
-Calculated my caloric requirements and followed them to a tee. I don't quite remember them now, but I was about 170 and to trim down to my current weight of 150, I'm sure I intook somewhere around 1,900 calories on lift days and 1,500 on rest days.
-Three trips to the gym a week, not including running sprints twice a week.

So this is a rather lengthy answer to "How do I get rid of my love handles?" that's really not for everyone. But here's some stuff that's for everyone.

1. Eating before you sleep doesn't affect your metabolism, automatically store food as fat, etc. Why would your digestive system work any different when you sleep? If you ate a big meal and then sat in a chair for a couple of hours, would you store all that as fat too?
2. Insulin insulin insulin. Let me try to recap my physiology here... Food (carbs and sugar especially) = insulin. Insulin = less glucagon and GH. Those hormones in those proportions means that there is an emphasis on storing fat rather than lipolysis, which is the breakdown of fat stores for energy. So what do you do? You avoid high glycemic index foods and exercise. Pretty common sense, but for reasons other than you might suspect. This is also where intermittent fasting rears its head, as no food = no insulin = eventual ketosis (fat burning state).
3. No, hundreds of crunches a day won't work. This is a false belief in "spot reduction," which is reducing fat in one particular region, such as the stomach. Depending on what your goals are, doing that much ab work might increase your waist size from the muscle density. In the same vein, let's examine the thigh adduction machine. Can't lose fat from your thighs specifically... making the muscles larger... so isn't that actually counter productive to your goals of slimming and toning? The only way for those to happen is to reduce overall body fat %.
4. Those hours of cardio on the elliptical? Not ideal. I feel like I'm playing a broken record because I tell this to my clients all day, but for fat loss, it's useful... to a point. And that point is reached within a couple of weeks. Other benefits are obvious, such as cardiovascular health and sports-specific training. However, cardio burns fewer calories than sprints/weights mainly because sprints/weights elevate your metabolism for as long as 24 hours afterwards, which is where the bulk of the calorie burning is done. Muscle mass also burns calories.
5. In a related point, I realize that many females are reluctant to use weights because they feel that they will become too bulky. If only it were that easy! You possess neither the genetics nor the testosterone to become like that.. and you won't be intaking the nutrition that you need to build all that muscle either. Seriously, you won't get big.
6. Whether your goals are fat loss, mass building, strength, etc, just remember that 80% of the battle is in the kitchen.