What are love handles?

“I like a little something to hold on to, so why don’t you grab onto my love handles and we’ll take a ride?”

No, he’s not talking about his Harley.

If comments like these make you grab on to your waist and pinch the fat that’s hanging over your jeans, you might be familiar with the term “love handles”. Love handles don’t have much to do with love but it sure is a sweet way to refer to the fat covering our out-of-shape external oblique muscles of the abdomen.

Love handles hang off the male physique more often than women’s bodies because more fat is stored in the midsection in men. Women’s bodies store fat a bit lower to the ground in the areas commonly referred to as “thunder thighs” or “junk in the trunk”. We all know that the aging process slows everything down and as we reach our salad days, the body’s processes begin to crawl at a leisurely pace.

Our bodies also digest food slower, creating energy at a much more relaxed rate, which encourages weight gain and fat, and love handles in particular, to accumulate and become more pronounced as we reach our twilight years.

Love handles, despite their name, do not inspire much deep affection from their host bodies’ egos but they do inspire passion to see them disappear. Many men and women who are genetic victims of love handles become obsessed with them, leading to a negative body image and a lifetime of worrying about their love handles hanging in the breeze. Of course, the best way to rid oneself of the pesky flab around one’s waist is through regular exercise and a healthy diet, lowering your caloric intake and making sure to get your love handles on the treadmill at least 3-5 times a week.

Plastic surgery or liposuction is a permanent way to eliminate the stubborn love struck fat from the body’s midsection and provides new meaning to the idea of being a “sucker for love”.

Maybe they are called love handles because they love to stick around and hang on tight, almost like they are in love with you!