- You can target a specific area for fat burn.
This is wrong on every level. No amount of crunches will ever make you loose fat on your stomach. No specific exercise will ever target fat burn in a specific area.
If you want to loose weight. Its simple, you eat SLIGHTLY less than normal, and i mean slightly, or exercise more. The main concept is that your using more energy than you are consuming. So, calories out vs calories in. The only way to loose weight is to eat less calories than you are burning.
Be very careful here. Only a small deficit in calories is needed to loose weight. A large decrease in calories leads to a whole host of issues mainly being that your body cannot receive the necessary nutrients due to a large decline in food and food variety.
However, when loosing weight there is NO WAY to loose weight in one area and keep weight in another area. Where you loose weight is totally genetic and variable for everyone.
Loose weight (if you are overweight or obese) to be healthier not to fit a ridiculous beauty standard.
2. A women that lifts heavy weight or even lifts weights at all will become bulky and manly.
Men have, on average, twice as much testosterone as women. This limits the amount of muscle a women can gain. Testosterone plays an important role in muscle and bone mass. Women don’t look bulky or manly UNLESS they have taken steroids or other doping methods that are UNNATURAL.
You will not look bulky.
3. Sweating more = more calories burned.
Sweating is merely the bodies mechanism to regulate body temperature. Sweating more than usual does not mean that you are having a better workout, it just means you’re warmer than usual. There are many factors that effect how much and often you sweat and they have nothing to do with exercise. Especially in resistance training, people tend to sweat less, because they are completing a swift, quick movement with a lot of force. Essentially, not raising your body temperature too much. Especially if the gym is cold.
If you don’t sweat much when exercising. Don’t worry, its still working.
4. Ab exercises are the best to strengthen and tighten your core.
WRONG. To build a strong core, exercises such as squats, dead lifts, bench press, generally compound movements using free weights, are essential. These exercises use a wide variety of muscles in your body and your core is needed to stabilise the movement – a real challenge for your core.
Ab exercises are great and they can really help with defining your ab muscles. HOWEVER, IN ORDER TO ACTUALLY SEE YOUR ABS YOU NEED TO HAVE A VERY LOW BODY FAT PERCENTAGE. In females, distinct abs can be and are for a lot of women incredibly unhealthy to attain. However, this is very dependant on genetics.
Women need fat and our bodies are incredible.
5. Heavy weight is the best way to build muscle.
To achieve muscle hypertrophy (building muscle) you must lift lighter weights with more repetitions. This type of work forms micro-tears in the muscle that brings about muscle adaptation. A continuous training programme focusing on lifting lighter weights (that still challenge you) with 12-20 reps ensure muscle hypertrophy and an increase in muscle size.
Training for muscle strength includes lifting heavy weight for less repetitions (1-6). This type of training ensures a increase in strength.
You should include both in a full proof workout plan. Focus more on one or the other dependant on your goals.
6. Muscle soreness after a workout means you had a good workout.
Muscle soreness occurs for many reasons. It can happen a lot of the time due to doing an exercise type that you don’t do very often. Muscle soreness lessens after a long time training in the same field and it certainly isn’t the be all and end all in determining if you had a good workout or not.
7. Protein bars or protein shakes are a good substitute for a meal and essential for building muscle.
Protein supplements are just that, supplements, and you should NEVER replace real food with protein shakes and they are certainly not necessary to building muscle.
To make functional changes in your muscles you need more than just protein. Essential amino acids, carbohydrates, many vitamins and many minerals are needed for muscle growth. Protein shakes DO NOT AND NEVER WILL be a good substitute for real food.
8. You must loose weight to look “toned”.
Yes and No here. In order to look toned you need to be two things: lean and have previous built up muscle.
You must build up your muscle first. An example: someone who weight trains and also has excess body fat. They won’t look toned and this is because they have lots of muscle under layers of fat. In order to see that muscle definition they would have to loose that excess fat to reveal their muscle.
Take a naturally skinny person with no weight training or exercise background. If they loose weight they cannot look toned and reveal muscle they don’t have.
Looking “toned” is a long process and CERTAINLY NOT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LOOSE A FEW POUNDS.
9. Cutting carbohydrates is the best way to loose weight.
Let me share this with you.
Calories per gram of macronutrient:
- protein – 4 kcals
- carbohydrate – 4 kcals
- fats – 9 kcals
Merely eating carbohydrates will NOT make you put on weight. Eating too many calories of any kind makes you put on weight.
Cutting out all carbohydrates from your diet will most definitely make you loose weight – you’re cutting out a full food group. Carbohydrates are ESSENTIAL to a healthy diet, fibre is essential. Cutting carbs is dangerous and should not be promoted.
You cant stop eating carbs forever. When you go back to eating how you were, you will put all the weight back on.
Carbohydrates is the bodies main fuel source. There are many reactions that take place when the body uses fat for fuel and its much harder to process. The probability is that your body will start to break down proteins and this can result in muscle loss, and we certainly don’t want that.
AGAIN, looking and felling healthy is the product of a LIFESTYLE not a diet.
Thank you for reading. Follow for more 🙂
Let's Talk Health with Mairi 