Any women successfully lost love handles?

ehaleykellogg94

25 year old 5’5 130ish pound Female here. I’ve been lifting on and off for the past 2 years. Been slacking lately due to work schedule but over the past week I’ve taken it back up and rejoined a gym so I can get back to heavier weights again. My main goal is to feel comfortable in a swim suit again. I haven’t really since high school due to love handles and jiggly thighs. lol...
Anybody have any tips? I’m eating pretty clean and am getting 100-120g of protein a day, and limiting carbs. My protein/fat/carb ratio has been around 35/40/25 but varies each day. I have a MFP goal of 1750cal with 30/30/40 as my macro goal. How long can I expect to ditch these love handles? I know you can’t spot reduce but am I on the right track being in a slight cal deficit and lifting? Or should I cut down calories more?

ElizabethKalmbach

... I'm 5'5 and 151 lbs, eating about 2100 calories per day (lots of cardio in my life) and lifting heavy about 3-4 days per week at about a 250-300 calorie deficit... on paper, anyway. (Some weeks I lose .5 pounds like I think I should. Other weeks I shovel a lot of snow and lose 1.5 lbs...) I'm not sure how you define "love handle" but you look like you're on the right track. Stick with your plan and take your measurements. Be extremely patient.

To be honest, at your height, I wouldn't be worrying about a deficit at all. I'd just eat maintenance calories an run a recomp to replace fat with muscle, but I don't know what your goals are and I have trouble visualising a "handle" on anyone at my height, weighing 20 lbs less than I do.

ehaleykellogg94

ElizabethKalmbach

Ah. OK, those aren't the fat handles most people think of when we say "love handles." Those are like... your hip bones. They aren't going to go away. I would recommend you NOT eat a deficit and work on strength training and build up more muscle in your glutes and core to give yourself the shape you want. If you don't already have a weight program, I would look at some of the Bret Contreras programming for glutes, or one of the basic heavy lifting programs like Strong Lifts 5x5 with good progression and compound lifts.

ehaleykellogg94

ElizabethKalmbach wrote: »

... I'm 5'5 and 151 lbs, eating about 2100 calories per day (lots of cardio in my life) and lifting heavy about 3-4 days per week at about a 250-300 calorie deficit... on paper, anyway. (Some weeks I lose .5 pounds like I think I should. Other weeks I shovel a lot of snow and lose 1.5 lbs...) I'm not sure how you define "love handle" but you look like you're on the right track. Stick with your plan and take your measurements. Be extremely patient.

To be honest, at your height, I wouldn't be worrying about a deficit at all. I'd just eat maintenance calories an run a recomp to replace fat with muscle, but I don't know what your goals are and I have trouble visualising a "handle" on anyone at my height, weighing 20 lbs less than I do.

Thanks for the reply! It’s good to hear from other women my height about how many calories they’re eating because I’ve done a bunch of online calculators and they all seem slightly off of each other but most agree my BMR is 13-1400 and my maintenance should be around 17-1800 which seems low to me. I have a toddler and between chasing him around, and walking around town carrying him everyday I feel like I’m pretty active even on my non-gym days. If I don’t track calories I’d probably eat 2500 a day easily. I’ve been staying around 17-1800 this week but I’ve used a lot of restraint.
I just posted a picture I just took. I don’t think the picture does it justice but I have a chunk of fat sitting right on both of my sides that’s even more pronounced in jeans. I’m thinking this is just where my body stores it’s fat which I think it’s somewhat typical for women. It’s just been hard to get rid of and I feel like I need to see quicker results to stay motivated but don’t want to cut too much and lose any muscle I’ve built.

ehaleykellogg94

ElizabethKalmbach wrote: »

Ah. OK, those aren't the fat handles most people think of when we say "love handles." Those are like... your hip bones. They aren't going to go away. I would recommend you NOT eat a deficit and work on strength training and build up more muscle in your glutes and core to give yourself the shape you want. If you don't already have a weight program, I would look at some of the Bret Contreras programming for glutes, or one of the basic heavy lifting programs like Strong Lifts 5x5 with good progression and compound lifts.


I will check those programs out. I mostly do squats, DLs, BPs and Shoulder presses with a lot of pushups/burpees/and kettlebell stuff thrown in the mix before or after my barbell lifts. But it would probably help to follow a program bs winging it. So you don’t think I need to do a small cut to get rid of excess fat? I’ve heard of body recomps but I’ve also read that they can take a while compared to cut/bulk phases.

ElizabethKalmbach

I get about 18-21k steps per day between my job and my crazy dogs, and I lift for about 30 minutes per session, 3-5 times per week. My *measured* RMR is 1411 calories, and my daily burn per Garmin is between 2400-2500/day. I'm losing about half a pound a week, but I'm hoping to *stop* losing and start a recomp at around 145#.

I *think* that if you build up your legs and glutes more the saddle bags will fade or at least be less visibly noticeable to you. You're already really lean, so there may not be too much you can do about what little fat you have, as women need to maintain more body fat than men to run all the hormonal trains. >_<

Honestly, though, you look great, but I get that we all have things about ourselves that are annoying or uncomfortable. Just realize that NO ONE ELSE CAN SEE IT BUT YOU. (Seriously. For a lady with a toddler, YOU. LOOK. AMAZING.) Patience will probably be key as building muscle is a bit more difficult than burning fat, but I think that even if you can't lose any more body fat, you probably *can* do a bit of sculpting with muscle to create the shape you want and draw the eye away from things you like less.

For that (muscle building), though, you'll likely need to eat at maintenance calories (at minimum), which is at least easier than trying to maintain deficit while being patient.

ehaleykellogg94

Thanks for taking the time to reply! Seriously, this helps a lot. It’s hard to know if I’m on the right track or need to push it more. I hate eating at a deficit but I’m worried about packing on more fat. I think I’m going to start StrongLifts after reading up on it tonight and I’ve heard a lot of people on these forums talk about it so it must be good. What kind of scale do you have by the way? I don’t trust mine enough to be able to tell .5lb fluctuations and am looking to get a new digital one so I can get a better understanding of how much I should be eating. Thanks again for the help!

ElizabethKalmbach

Hey, sorry. I typed out this long winded reply on my tiny little phone screen and hit "DONE," which apparently means "delete this" not "save and post." Then I got mad and went to bed.

I don't think ANY scale can give you accurate answers about your weight, because weight loss isn't linear and water retention confuses the issue. (Right now, I'm up about 5# because I've got water retention from a sore knee and a new weight routine ON TOP of my monthly hormone cycle...) Unfortunately, making dietary calibration corrections takes time and as many data points as you can bring yourself to record.

Most people on MFP like to use trending apps like Happy Scale or Libra to record their daily weight and show them the *trend* of where their weight is going. Basically, you'd weigh yourself every day or every other day or once a week and enter it into the app, and the app averages all the data points together over time and shows you where you're going. It takes patience (anything less than 4-6 weeks of data is subject to error, due to "monthly" hormone cycles, unusually salty dinners, and any weirdness with your workout schedule) and practice to weigh yourself daily without judgement, just to collect the data, but I've found that taking measurements can also help. Often when I'm not losing scale weight, I'll be dropping inches off my waist or adding inches (Inch. Singular. ) to the area I'm trying to put muscle on.

I have one of the cheap "FitDays" scales from Amazon. It does it's own trending, so I don't need a separate app to do the job and show me where my weight is going, I just have to ignore the "body fat" calculation it offers me, because I *know* it's wrong.

Anngetsfit

I think you are on the right track with your eating and lifting weights. I am doing close to the same thing. I also have added the T25 videos into my routine. Doing them for a few months helped tone up my middle.

sardelsa

My love handle area is one of the last places I lose. For me making sure I have enough muscle base plus eating in a deficit, adequate protein and lifting.

In your case I would either go with a small deficit (so set loss at 0.5lb per week or less) or consider maintaining to recomp. I am currently 135lbs a few inches taller than you and I still have some fat I would like to lose (including my love handle area) but I don't want to lose more so I am recomping.

Ps. You don't have to eat clean or limit carbs to see results.

ehaleykellogg94

ElizabethKalmbach wrote: »

Hey, sorry. I typed out this long winded reply on my tiny little phone screen and hit "DONE," which apparently means "delete this" not "save and post." Then I got mad and went to bed.

I don't think ANY scale can give you accurate answers about your weight, because weight loss isn't linear and water retention confuses the issue. (Right now, I'm up about 5# because I've got water retention from a sore knee and a new weight routine ON TOP of my monthly hormone cycle...) Unfortunately, making dietary calibration corrections takes time and as many data points as you can bring yourself to record.

Most people on MFP like to use trending apps like Happy Scale or Libra to record their daily weight and show them the *trend* of where their weight is going. Basically, you'd weigh yourself every day or every other day or once a week and enter it into the app, and the app averages all the data points together over time and shows you where you're going. It takes patience (anything less than 4-6 weeks of data is subject to error, due to "monthly" hormone cycles, unusually salty dinners, and any weirdness with your workout schedule) and practice to weigh yourself daily without judgement, just to collect the data, but I've found that taking measurements can also help. Often when I'm not losing scale weight, I'll be dropping inches off my waist or adding inches (Inch. Singular. ) to the area I'm trying to put muscle on.

I have one of the cheap "FitDays" scales from Amazon. It does it's own trending, so I don't need a separate app to do the job and show me where my weight is going, I just have to ignore the "body fat" calculation it offers me, because I *know* it's wrong.

This is all good info. Thanks for taking the time again to type it all out! I’ll probably grab a new digital scale and check out one of those apps. Hope you have a good day!