How can I tone my midsection and love handles?

Most important thing you need to know is that doing crunches, sit ups, or any kind of ab exercise will only train the muscles under the fat. In fact, working your abs everyday will only lead to a bigger midsection. This is obviously something you don't want. Do a variety of ab exercises that hit all the ab muscles(obliques and rectus abdominis) from different angles. Stick to 3 ab exercises at end of your workout, one for the upper part of your midsection(swiss ball crunch), one for you lower part of the midsection,(hanging leg raise) and one for your sides(side plank). I would not recommend working your abs more than 3 times a week. Your ab muscles are just like any other muscle in your body, so exercising your abs more than 3 times a week will just lead to over training the muscles.


The most effective combination for building and toning the midsection is choosing healthy foods, cardio, and strength training. Basically burn more calories than you take in, which will shred the fat covering those abs. Avoid the fat triggering foods such as sugar (high fructose), trans fats (found in junk food, refined carbs (avoid breads, crackers or cereals that use the words bleached or enriched), and lastly don't drink your calories. Alcohol even in small amounts, can trigger large changes in your triglyceride levels. Healthy nutrition and a variety of exercises is the best route to take for the long run.
If you don't have that much time to spend in the weight room, I would then recommend full body circuit training workouts for 3 times a week. These workouts should consist of mainly compound exercises that work more than one muscle group at a time( squats, deadlifts, standing shoulder press) ending with a few basic isolation exercises(bicep curls, tricep extensions, ab exercises) . Stick with free weights and calisthenics exercises because most of these moves train the abs indirectly. Moves such as squats and hyper-extensions improve posture and work the back muscles. In order to have strong abs you must have a strong lower back. These workouts should last no longer than an hour and rest periods no longer than a minute. Stick to 8-12 reps of 2-3 sets for your compound moves and 12-15 reps for 2-3 sets for the isolation moves. You should barley be able to complete full reps for last set of each workout. You can also include interval training in these workouts by adding short burst of cardio in between sets.

Remember it is important to mix it up, so use a variety of exercises to stress each muscle group. Continue to challenge yourself, it is a good idea to invest in a heart monitor to get a better understanding of how intense your workouts really are. If you are just getting back into training, then go into it easy but stay consistent. Also, there is no such thing as spot reducing so you have to work the entire body just to tone one muscle group. 


"Strive for progress, not perfection"


Thanks,
Jason Whalen