Got Love Handles for Grabs?

One thing that never fails to happen whenever I start to re-organise the book cupboard is that I will become engross in a book that happens to fascinate me at the time. But that cupboard desperately needs tidying up ever since Mat took all 3 shelf-fulls of his books with him to KK. I need to relocate to the vacant shelves all the books that were double-parked including those that were stacked horizontally; and for these I will have to arrange them in the more accessible upright position. With me getting caught up in reading all the time, I'm not sure when this project will ever finish, though.

Anyway this time I found this book - "LOSE THE LOVE HANDLES" - by Dave Kuehls, amongst the few other anti-aging titles.

Let me type out an extract from the introductory page.
"Okay, guys. The first thing I want you to do with this book is close it.

That's right, close it. Put it down.
But first, remember these instructions. Once your hands are free, you are going to reach under your shirt and use your thumb and forefinger to pinch flesh above your hips. Go ahead and do that. Then come back."

A few lines down he says:

"If you pinched an inch or more, you've got youself a set of love handles, my friend. The name is amazingly inaccurate: you don't love them, and your wife or girlfriend certainly doesn't either. Ever hear women talk dreamily about getting their hand on your - lard?"

Well, after observing so many men in my five decades plus, I can attest that Malay men in general will start depositing unused fat onto their abdomens from their early forties. Hubby and his four brothers, and also my own four brothers all exhibited this same male pattern fatness. All of them were skinny when they got married, smoked and did not exercise. By the time they turned 40, their belts needed to be loosen a couple of notches, and their trousers hung higher up the ankles due to the tighter fit further up north. And most men I encounter quit smoking as they approach their 50's, which further adds to the weight problem as they begin to eat on the bounce.

This book is actually pushing a program called "30 days to an arrow-straight waist!" which sounds just like any other marketing ploy. Even the great Bill Phillips of "Body-for-Life" fame advocates a 12 week program of mainly weight-training, a proper diet of 6 small meals a day and some cardio-vascular exercise. Hubby became a gym-rat while doing this BFL program, yes he built up his muscles and spent a fortune on protein supplements but his weight stayed up and his love handles were still there for me to ....... grab?

What seems to be helping him though is sticking to 3 meals daily, with lunch being very low calorie, typically fruits and capati. Off course he still works out at the gym (he loves his muscles, I do too :-) ) and alternates that with swimming laps about 1.5 to 2 km each time). There are some tablets that he swallows, guarana and calcium I think, and he drinks coffee before bed to help maintain a fast metabolism. Hmmm the love handles are shrinking, his pants hang looser now, but the 6-pack are still eluding him, though.

Flipping through the pages, the program in this book looks quite prospective to me: three days a week of aerobics with Mondays being moderate, Thursdays intensive, and Saturdays long and steady; and two days a week of weights concentrating on the big muscle groups - back, chest, thighs and butt - because big muscles burn more calories. Hey, this might just work for my typical Mak Cik problem areas too. And it also says to eat 3 square meals a day, something I can handle. I should give it a try. It's only for 30 days anyway.

Oh dear, here goes Zendra again at yet another work-out program. If only she would make the trip to the gym more diligently than of late, she might just make that 30% body-fat sexy siren.