One of the best things you can do for your body is indulge in any form of physical activity. Physical activity is commonly known to manage weight, but it also has other health benefits that are usually not considered.
It can improve brain health, keep you away from potentially all diseases, strengthen the muscles and bones, improve the immune system, manage stress, and keep you more active.
When being healthy is not just seen from the weight management perspective, people can enjoy fitness. While the topic is discussed quite commonly, there are a few things that people associate it with, which may have led them to avoid taking the fitness move.
In this article, let’s clarify the common fitness misconceptions and get the facts right with Nidhi, an online certified fitness trainer who’s been practicing fitness for a long time.
Also read: Top Fitness Trends: What’s Hot in the Industry Right Now
The Common Fitness Myths: Unveiling Fitness Facts
Gym talks can sometimes spread common fitness misconceptions that aren’t backed by facts. Let’s reason it out to clear up certain misconceptions about a few concepts in our minds.
1. Carbs can make you fat.
Carbs are the main source of nutrients found in any food, along with fats and proteins. But it’s not carbs that make you gain weight; it’s about the type and amount you consume.
Many relate the stimulation of insulin by carbs to weight gain. However, when low- and high-carb diets were tested for the same calories and protein intake, it was seen that a lower-carb diet didn’t aid in weight loss.
Thus, proving the impact of lowering carbs is no help, disproving that eating carbs doesn’t make you fat.
The amount of carbohydrates you intake, despite the type, can make you gain weight; thus, the calories must be in moderation. Choosing complex carbs, which digest slowly and keep you fuller longer, can help control weight and boost metabolism over other types of carbohydrates.
2. Wearing jackets while working out helps you burn fat faster.
This is one of the other gym joint exercise and fitness myths. When you wear an extra layer, it just adds heat to your body, and as a result, you sweat more while you are exercising along with the jacket.
There is a fine line between losing weight and fat loss. Weight constantly fluctuates throughout the day as your body is a composition of bone, muscle, fat, and water, whereas fat loss is losing one component in your body that is fat and is a slow process. It wouldn’t just happen with a sweatshirt or hoodie.
When you stand on a weighing scale after an intense workout, you tend to see a lower number due to a loss of water weight and not a fat loss from a jacket.
3. Fat makes you fat.
Each fat has a different composition; not all are made equally, so you must understand this fine line.
The body needs some fat and can have about 30% of that fat from your daily intake of calories. Ensure most of it is unsaturated and has only 5% saturated fat, and avoid trans fat entirely.
Unsaturated fats keep your belly full, and you feel satisfied for a long time. That way, you can cut back on extra snacking calories. Some of the good plant-based unsaturated foods available to you are avocados, olive oil, olives, groundnuts, peanut butter, pumpkin, sunflower, sesame seeds, cashews, pistachios, almonds, and pecans.
Therefore, you would get fat if you consumed more trans and saturated fats. But having good fat is essential, and it shouldn’t be curbed entirely by the logic that fat can make you fat.
4. Lifting weight in females causes bulking.
This is the biggest myth of physical fitness that one could believe and fear even lifting one dumbbell because they don’t want to get bulky. For females to get bulky, they must have enough testosterone. Still, women generate less testosterone naturally, so there is no way they would get bulky, unlike men, whose bodies generate more testosterone.
For most females to get that bulky, they must consume more calories than maintenance, which they typically don’t. More specifically, they must have a high amount of protein, which women don’t generally consume unless they have a motive to build muscle.
Lifting weights aids in calorie deficits and fat loss. People mostly misunderstand that cardio alone burns calories, but nobody knows it can even make you lose muscle.
So keep the myth aside and elevate your mood and cognitive clarity by lifting weight rather than sidelining it for being “bulky.”
5. Eating late at night causes weight gain.
This common fitness myth is different. This is about when you eat, more than how much you eat. There lies the answer!
A human on a typical day must contain a range of calories depending on weight, age, gender, and height. The weight gain only depends on how much you consume and how much you burn.
In an experiment, when food was consumed concerning the timing of the night, it was seen that adults who ate food after 8 P.M gained weight over those who didn’t. But wait, it is not because of the timing, but rather due to the tendency to eat more calories than usual at night.
This proves that timing doesn’t matter if you eat within your daily calorie intake and make the right food choices.
So that’s the issue, not the timing! Even if you eat at night, eat nutrient-rich food and stay within your calorie intake.
6. Exercise more than an hour
We often believe this and spend more than one hour in the gym. Even if you incorporate 20 minutes of exercise into your routine, it has more significant benefits over time. This is more about the efficiency and regularity of the exercise rather than the number of hours you spend exercising.
Therefore, you need to get competent at exercising. Incorporate doing strength training before aerobics. When your body is indulged in activating the carbohydrate supply, you can utilize the time for intense workouts for shorter times, such as strength training. When it begins to use fat from your body, there is nothing better than doing aerobics during this time.
Also, the more you train your muscles, the more harm you will do. Rather than building muscle tissue, your body will tend to break down the muscles, thus reversing your purpose.
7. Stretching before you exercise:
It is no science-backed fact that stretching before the exercise would help; instead, it’s the opposite: do it after exercise.
When you have finished an impulsive exercise, the joints are under stress. Stretching after exercise removes the tension from the muscles and joints, also aiding in improving your posture and blood circulation.
Commonly, people stretch before exercise to avoid injury post or during a workout. Since there is no evidence, we can’t rely on it. Moreover, it is said that doing so can weaken the performance.
Wrap up
We know you’ve been misled by many fitness myths, and you need clarity. Fitness with Nidihi is a certified dietician and fitness trainer who can help you lose weight with the utmost clarity on the journey by making you aware of all the fitness facts and myths.
We’ve been helping many like you, and this isn’t new to us. Contact us now to achieve your fitness goals.
