Common Diet and Exercise Myths

You can’t turn on the television, pickup a health magazine or browse the Internet without seeing those ubiquitous ads for weight loss and fitness. Not only do these ads promise to give you the body you’ve always dreamed of, but it’s a breeze to boot. Its funny how – deep down – we know this can’t be true and yet… billions of dollars a year are wasted on all kinds of diet fads and strange exercise equipment. We just want to believe and marketers are more than happy to play on our desires.

Let’s debunk some of the most common myths related to diet and exercise so we can get down to really becoming healthier individuals.

1. Spot Reducing

Millions of abdominal machines are purchased with the idea that by exercising the “fat” area, you can be slimmer. Bad news: It doesn’t work. There is no such thing as “spot reducing”. In fact, you may actually be making the situation worse; muscles grow, not shrink with exercise. So for example, instead of having a flat, attractive “6-pack” stomach, you may have a “barrel” – hard underneath, but protruding and fat looking on the surface. Unless you have low body fat, you can have abs of steel and nobody can tell. In order to be slimmer, you must lose fat with fat burning exercise and intelligent dieting. Proper form during your abdominal workout is important as well to avoid that “barrel” look.

2. Eating less and hard exercise will make me fit and burn fat

Sounds right, though, doesn’t it? But it’s not. Indeed, working out really hard and cutting your caloric intake can land you in hospital, or at least on the list of walking wounded. This is one of the most common errors made by people of all fitness levels – especially those that want immediate results. Actually, you can look fitter and lose weight in the short term using this method. But after that, the long term effects can be devastating. Your body needs calories to do hard exercise and grow muscle – more, not less. Too much exercise without the right fuel will cause your body to literally feed on itself and making you weaker and more injury prone. It’s the type of calories that are consumed that makes all the difference. Fat burning requires long term exercise and diet change, not heavy exercise and overall caloric reduction.

3. Eating or drinking a lot of <insert food or beverage here> will help me lose weight

Eating or drinking a lot of anything – even water – is just not good for you. Remember those “grapefruit” diets that claimed to burn fat? Try drinking a couple liters of grapefruit juice in one day – but don’t stray too far from the bathroom, because you are going to have a really nasty case of diarrhea. It’s simply too much acid for your digestive system. Try eating celery all day and then doing a heavy workout at the gym – good luck. There is no one “miracle fat burner” that will do it all – only a healthy, balanced diet and regular exercise program will work.

4. I’ll lose weight by eating “Health Food”

Right. Unfortunately, the label “health food” can be a bit a misnomer. Just because it says “granola” on the label doesn’t mean it won’t make you fat. Many of these products are loaded with sugar, fat and carbohydrates – just what you need to turn into a small hippo. You’ll lose weight by eating the right amount of healthy foods – a big distinction. Start reading the labels on these products and you’ll see most are comparable in bad calories to regular non-health food products – in fact, they may be even more fattening. Learn which foods you need and what to stay away from. Read those labels – fat burning is an intelligence driven activity – don’t let the marketers fool you.

5. I can eat what I want as long as I exercise

Attractive sounding, but untrue. Running 6 miles per hour (that’s 10 minute miles) for one hour burns between 700 and 800 calories depending on your weight. Eating a piece of cheese cake and an order of French fries negates those burned calories. BTW: Unless you run regularly, running 6 miles at that speed is a real challenge – one far beyond the abilities of an average person trying to lose weight. Typical workouts burn about 300 to 400 calories an hour. Even professional athletes who use 2,000 calories during a training session watch what they eat because they know just how easy it is to put on weight by eating the wrong foods.

Use your head!

Your best fat burning ally is your own brain – don’t believe the hype. Read the labels, check the Internet and use your common sense. Get educated, get disciplined and get serious – it’s the only way.