Are you receiving questionable fitness tips? You can’t believe everything you hear in the gym.

Despite our best efforts, some off-the-wall fitness and weight loss myths are still making the rounds. It’s better to know the truth, so you can avoid wasting time and suffering disappointment.

So, be prepared to be shocked as I reveal the top six most common fitness and weight loss myths.

Weightlifting is Only For Getting Big Muscles

Weightlifting still suffers from an image problem especially with women. Too many people believe that weightlifting is only for those who want to look like comic book superheroes come to life.  Women fear that they will have “thunder thighs” so avoid the weights and end up spending hours on the cardio machines.

But weightlifting is valuable for getting in shape and losing weight. It’s suitable across genders and age groups.  If anything it becomes the most important type of exercise to ramp up after losing weight, especially for those over 40 years of age.  This is my #1 recommendation to all my clients after they finish the fat burn phase of their intermittent fasting weight loss program with me.

Lifting weights doesn’t mean that you will bulk up. You would have to embark on a specific routine to achieve massive muscles. But regular weightlifting will increase your muscle mass and muscles burn more calories at rest.  This means your basal metabolic rate increases so even while you sleep your body is burning more calories. This is a cornerstone to being able to maintain weight loss with ease.  Relax if you’re concerned about having a body that’s too bulky. Once again, you would have to maintain a deliberate regimen to see that result. 

You can keep the shape you prefer. But weightlifting will give your body more tone, help you maintain your weight loss and prevent falls which becomes even more important in the over 60 demographic.  Increased muscle mass and strength is the biggest predictor of healthy aging and successful weight maintenance. 

So stop spending hours on the cardio machines at the gym and pick up some weights, resistance bands or even use your own body weight to work on resistance training. 

Calories Should Be Your Primary Concern

Counting calories to the near exclusion of everything else belongs to another era. These days, we know that the calories in a fast food cheeseburger aren’t the same as those in wild salmon, for example.

Instead of just counting calories, you have to take into account the source of the calories. You also have to consider the effect of the food on your body. Each food should have a nutritional profile that fits your well-chosen weight loss program.

Imagine someone telling you they have cut their calories by eating only one meal a day. It sounds good until you discover that the meal consists solely of fried donuts. My Toronto weight loss programs do use intermittent fasting for successful weight loss but this does not mean my clients  just skip meals and then eat whatever they want.  What my clients eat is nutrient dense so their body’s are healthier and less inflamed all of which contributes to successful weight that they can maintain.  

You Can Easily Burn Off Extra Calories

How often have you heard someone say they’re going to spend an extra 30 minutes on the treadmill to make up for overindulging at the drive-thru? Their plan seems admirable. After all, if you can burn off calories that easily, why not indulge?

But let’s take a look at reality and do the math. If you consumed a Big Mac, medium fries, and a medium drink, you would have consumed an estimated 1080 calories. And that’s McDonald’s calculation.

So would 30 minutes on a treadmill erase those calories? Not even close. The typical 150-pound person would have to run at a pace of five miles an hour for 1.8 hours to burn 1,000 calories. Suddenly, that trip through the drive-thru doesn’t sound so appealing.  It is incredibly easy to undo the workout you did at the gym just by doing some mindless counter grazing in the kitchen.  Suddenly those 400 hundred calories you burnt off is undone by one specialty coffee at Starbucks or one slice of banana bread. 

Instead, focus on a doctor-supervised weight loss program that focuses on  nutrition and metabolic reset to activate your fat burning system known as ketosis.  This is  built on solid scientific research rather than myth.

Under professional  guidance, you’ll maintain a carefully arranged nutritional plan that will give your body the nutrients it needs while igniting your metabolism to burn unwanted fat.

No Pain, No Gain

Why do even the best of us turn masochistic when getting in shape? We’ve learned to be kinder and gentler to ourselves when it comes to mental health, but sadly we still think we need to whip ourselves into physical shape.

Collapsing at the end of a workout shouldn’t be a goal. And the inability to summon stiff muscles to get out of bed the next morning shouldn’t be a badge of honor.

Any competent fitness trainer should be able to draft a sensible workout routine for you. It should challenge you but not make you feel victimized.

Getting in shape should be one of life’s great pleasures. It shouldn’t be a punishment.

Often with exercise, less is more.  When people do very long hard workouts multiple times/week they are actually putting their body into a stress state for too long and this increases the stress hormone, Cortisol.  Cortisol increases blood sugar levels and inflammation, the results of which block fat burn.  I have seen this with clients when they decide to hit the gym too hard for too long.   We can see that their body has come out of ketosis and their weight loss, specifically fat burn comes to a screeching halt.  

This is why High Intensity Interval training for shorter periods of time (20 minutes) just a few times/week plus a slow strength training session 1 -2 /week is the most effective for improving fitness, increasing muscle mass and supporting healthy weight loss.

You Can Lose Weight in One Specific Area

We would like to tell our bodies to concentrate on dropping pounds from only one area. That’s called spot reduction or target fat loss. But it doesn’t work.

The body is quite democratic when it comes to losing weight. The pounds come off a little bit from everywhere.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be specific areas we want to enhance. But it means you shouldn’t shift your fitness routine off balance by being overly focused on one body part.

Instead, think holistically. You want to concentrate on the whole body and disregard bogus weight loss tips. After all, the ability to lose weight in one place is only a myth.

Fat loss will happen everywhere but with a plan that gets your body into ketosis using intermittent fasting it will help to burn the deep visceral fat which does tend to accumulate in the midsection.  

Exercise Converts Fat Into Muscle

Fat tissue and muscle tissue are different. One can’t transform into the other.

But the myth persists that, like Rumpelstiltskin spinning straw into gold, we can convert flab into solid rock. What we really want to do is strengthen the muscle with exercise while reducing fat through good nutrition and ketosis.

The result may appear to onlookers as if we worked a miracle. But we’ll know that the credit goes to a sensible fitness program of reasonable exercise and healthy eating.

Go Beyond Fitness Myths

How many of the fitness myths mentioned have you heard?

How many were you believing? Don’t worry. We won’t tell anyone.

But now that you know what’s true and what’s false, what’s your next step? Talk to us to get started with your Weight loss Toronto journey.