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Top 4 Health & Fitness Myths. Do you still believe them?
Feeling confused about fitness? Let’s bust some myths the power way!
The fitness industry is a huge business that is saturated with images of beautiful creatures endorsing the latest diet, workouts or nutritional super-food. Just like the myth that the earth is flat, which even has its own support group, aptly named ‘The Flat Earth Society’, there are nutrition myths out there that people still believe in following. We’re here to set the record straight and ease your confusiuon. Let’s look at some of the biggest
Myths.
#1 Eating Carbs make you fat.
The Truth
Carbohydrates or any other macronutrient (Protein & Fat) individually do not make us fat. Overconsumption of food is what makes put on weight. The reason carbs get this bad rap is that carbohydrate foods tend to be highly palatable foods especially when they are combined with fat, sugary snacks like chocolate, crisps, biscuits, cakes, bread with butter, pizza, etc.
If we are trying to lose weight and we cut these foods from our diet, we then lose weight and put it down to the fact that we stopped eating carbs. We could have done this with protein also, given that the calorie load per gram is the same for protein as it is for carbohydrates. It is not necessarily the cutting of carbs per se that has caused us to lose weight, but rather the reduction of overall calorie consumption.
#2 High Reps are for toning and losing fat, low reps are to build muscle.
The Truth
You can lose fat and build muscle through a variety of reps and loads. Whether its building muscle, losing fat and or having a toned body. It’s not necessarily the number of reps or weight that is used to burn the most fat, but the intensity of the workout that defines the effect.
The more important truth to this myth is that nutrition will have a far more significant impact on how much fat you lose compared to the rep range, weights or the type of training method you use. For example, if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you can lift heavy weights for low reps and most likely not gain any muscle while losing fat.
#3 You can spot reduce fat on certain areas with targeted exercises.
There are claims that by performing exercises that target specific muscles you can reduce fat in that specific area, such as performing abdominal movements in the effort to lose belly fat.
The Truth
You cannot burn fat in a particular area by doing exercises that try to isolate that body part. Doing crunches will not target fat that is stored around the abdominals, for example. It’s worth noting also that a toned stomach will only show if your body fat is low. Movements like crunches and planks do very little for fat burning around the stomach.
#4 Lifting heavy weights make you bulky.
The Truth
The simple truth is, lifting weights is not going to make you bulky unless you make a huge specific nutritional push and eat loads, and we mean loads. The hormonal conditions necessary for gaining large amounts of muscle mass aren’t present in most of us.
Not to mention that we are often well short on sleep and other recovery strategies essential if we want to build our bodies. Yes, you might gain some muscle if you train with weights, a small amount, but the effects are positive: improved posture, a trimmer silhouette, structural balance, reduced risk of injury, increased fat loss and an overall increase in your functional strength.
At Power, we aim to educate and inspire our members with monthly check ins and in-house workshops to help you understand the basics of training and nutrition. Afterall a healthy lifestyle doesn’t need to be so complicated. If you’ve ever been guilty of believing the above myths don’t worry, we’ve all been there at some point!
The Power Team