Geography

Located around a person's midsection, love handles, or the bulges of fat at the side of waist, cover the oblique muscles and make the midsection appear larger.

Size

Generally, love handles increase in size as we get older. As our food intake increases and activity decreases, excess fat makes love handles a permanent home. Also, individuals with higher body fat percentages typically have more pronounced love handles than individuals with lower fat percentages.

Effects

These stubborn bulges of fat more often than not produce a negative body image in women and men alike. Even significant weight loss does not guarantee their disappearance. If love handles remain following significant weight loss, feelings of frustration and a lowered feeling of accomplishment can result.

Misconceptions

Unfortunately, doing a lot of oblique crunches won't automatically equal shrunken love handles. Shrinking your love handles takes more than specialized, targeted exercises and miracle diet pills. With these bulges of fat, spot reduction does not work.

Prevention/Solution

While many products, pills and exercises are marketed as quick solutions for eliminating unwanted love handles, fitness and nutrition experts generally agree that love-handle spot reduction is impossible. In order to shrink your love handles, you'd need to reduce your body fat percentage. To do this, consume fewer calories through a healthy diet and increase cardio and resistance training. Building energy with nutrition, burning fat and building muscle are the only surefire ways to significantly decrease the waistline bulge.

Today, a popular albeit painful quick fix to stubborn love handles is liposuction. While liposuction removes the fat cells in your love handles, this method is only ideal for individuals who are 20 to 30 lbs overweight. As the most frequently targeted area by men who opt for liposuction, according to the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons, love handles are quickly becoming a staple service for plastic surgeons and medical spas.

Expert Insight

Most doctors agree that excess abdominal fat carries increased health risks including heart disease and diabetes. Dr. Michael Hamilton, the director of the Duke University Diet and Fitness Center, dismisses love handles as nothing more than superficial fat that doesn't count from a health point of view. However, other experts disagree. They contend that while love handles are superficial fat, any fat around the midsection can be a health hazard.

According to Dr. Scott Grundy, director of the Center of Human Nutrition at the University of Texas Southwest Medical Center, "Our research shows that if you have abdominal obesity, even on the sides of your body, you're at greatest risk."

While experts differ in opinion on the potential health hazards associated with love handles, most people agree that visible bulges on their sides are completely undesirable. Most people also seek the easiest method possible to make them disappear.