You Were Conned
Here are 20 common diet and exercise myths, with explanations attached:
1) If you eat a low-fat diet you’ll lose weight
Fat as a macronutrient has little effect one way or the other on your weight loss efforts. Fat is high in calories, and it’s fairly dense so it’s easy to overeat, but if you’re controlling your total calorie intake the number of fat grams you consume won’t have much impact on your overall weight loss.
2) Situps will give you washboard abs
Spot reduction, that is removing fat in one particular area, is not possible without surgery. Situps will tend to build some muscle tissue in the abdominal region, but the only way to have a flat stomach is a proper diet that reduces your overall bodyfat percentage.
3) Women need to train differently than men
Women’s muscle tissue is virtually identical to men’s, the methods and effects will be very similar. Women do have a different hormonal balance, which does mean it will be somewhat more difficult to pack on lots of lean tissue, especially in the upper body, but proper weight training programs for men and women will be indistinguishable from each other.
4) Use light weights and high reps to “Tone” your muscles
Muscle tone is combination of muscular hypertrophy and low bodyfat percentage. Light weights and high repetitions will tend to create cardio or endurance type adaptations such as increased tolerance to lactic acid buildup, but this has little positive effect on appearance.
5) If I’m not sore, I didn’t have a good workout
Soreness is not a good indicator of workout quality. If you increased your power output since your last workout, then you did well, if you didn’t then you did not, no matter how sore you are.
6) If I lift weights, I’ll swell up and look like a bodybuilder in no time, yuck!
Professional bodybuilders spend years lifting weights, eating strict diets and taking boatloads of pharmaceuticals, most people couldn’t look like that if they tried, let alone by accident. If by some odd circumstance you manage to gain more muscle than you want, it’s pretty easy to slow your progress or even lose some by reversing the normal recommendations.
7) Eating red meat is bad for you
This is a leftover from the 80’s. While you don’t want to go crazy on saturated fats, lean beef is a healthy part of a balanced diet. This isn’t license to pig out on chorizo at all hours, but having a steak isn’t going to make you seize up and keel over at the dinner table.
8) Fruit juice is better for you than soda
Sadly, the main component of both items is sugar, and that’s not a good thing. Fruit juice tends to be high in calories, and cause a severe insulin impact, you’ll want to avoid it for the most part.
9) Skipping meals promotes fat loss
Not eating for prolonged periods tends to put you in a catabolic (muscle wasting) state, which is counter-productive from a fat loss perspective as it will lower your metabolism.
10) Protein is bad for your kidneys
Unless you have a pre-existing kidney condition, protein is perfectly safe and necessary. Excessive amounts, over 2g/lb of bodyweight are generally not recommended, but that’s A LOT, you’ll be hard pressed to eat the recommended amount of 1.25g/lb of lean body mass so I wouldn’t worry about it.
11) Squats are bad for your knees
Done with proper form, squats are actually beneficial to knee health. As with all exercises, not using proper form is not good for you.
12) You should always lift to failure
Failure can be useful in some training modalities, but it’s certainly not a requirement. Overall it tends to impose more stress on the nervous system than normal modes of training and should be used sparingly.
13) Running is the best way to get fit, in fact you don’t need anything else
Cardiovascular exercise is a key component to any fitness plan, but without hypertrophy training, it can actually have negative affects on appearance, marathon runners for example.
14) Supplements are magic, taking them will make you thin and fit without effort
No one has yet invented the magic weight loss pill, and if they did you’d need a prescription to get it. Anything you can buy over the counter is either a waste of money, or will provide less than 5% increase in performance. That 5% can be handy when you’ve already maxed out all your other factors, but don’t think you’re going to pop a few pills and be transformed overnight.
15) The smith machine is a safer way to do many exercises
This piece of machinery is so dangerous it should probably be banned from most gyms. Due to it’s restricted range of motion, it tends to be very hard on your joints. The machine is quite difficult to use safely, and honestly unless you’re a professional with some sort of specialized requirement you should just stay away from it.
16) No pain, no gain
Pain is the body’s natural warning mechanism, ignore it at your peril. That said it’s important to learn the difference between pain and discomfort. Pain is bad, and generally leads to injury. Discomfort is a normal part of training, and should be expected.
17) Vegetarianism is a more natural, healthier way to eat
Homo Sapiens Sapiens (that’s you) is an opportunistic omnivore, which means that both animals and plants are a normal part of your diet. Look in the mirror and smile with your teeth showing, start in the center and count outwards, see that third tooth? It’s called a canine tooth, and it’s specifically designed for tearing flesh. Animals which ignore parts of their natural food supply do not live healthy lives. (Note: If you have moral reasons for being a vegetarian, I can understand and even applaud that, but don’t go around claiming it’s good for you.)
18) Vegetarians can’t build muscle
Not true. Plants contain incomplete proteins, so it’s possible, though very difficult, to create a balanced diet using only plant food sources by using carefully planned food combinations. You’ll need to take a variety of vitamins and supplements to make up for micronutrient deficiencies, the protein density is low so you’ll need to eat like a horse (hah, no pun intended), and an improperly designed vegetarian diet can impair brain function, but it is possible.
19) You’ll burn more fat at a lower exercise intensity
This is true, but in a misleading way. While a greater percentage of calories burned at lower intensity will come from fat storage, you’ll burn more overall calories from fat at higher intensity, rendering the percentage meaningless. Always be suspicious of someone saying the easier path is the right path.
20) More exercise is always better
If only that were true. In the US, it’s a pretty common belief that if you want something, working harder at it is the best way to get it. For some things this is true, for exercise doing more than your body can recover from will actually reduce your results. This is not an excuse to be lazy but a warning not to overdo it. That said, most people tend to under-train, not over-train.