Whatever your weight and fitness goals may be, before you dive in working towards them, it’s important that you first get educated and come to grips with some of the biggest lies perpetuated about the weight-loss/fitness industry. If you don’t, you may end up not only wasting your valuable time, but perhaps even doing damage to your long-term health.
The sad but true fact is, in the weight loss and fitness war, not everyone has your best interests at heart. Professionals in the fitness industry, gym owners, personal trainers and supplement company reps all make their living off people who are looking to get fit, so naturally they want to sell you on more quick-fix products, daily personal training sessions, or pricey gym memberships and extras such as group fitness classes. While some of these extras really are to your benefit, some aren’t. It is YOU who is responsible for making sure that your money is well invested.
You’ll need to do the background check on your trainer to ensure they have many success stories to their name and that they clearly do have your best interest in mind. This may seem like common sense, but all too often people will assume that everything they are being told by professionals about how to achieve their desired fitness goals is the truth when it simply is not. It is very easy to become yet another victim to one or more of the major fitness lies.
If you truly want to experience optimal progress from your workout and nutrition program, weeding out dangerous and mis-leading lies ahead of time and side-stepping them is key to your success. You won’t fall prey to them because you’ll know better.
Check out these BIG fitness lies. (yes, because of prior programming, you’ll likely find that some of these run counter to everything you currently believe and you’ll feel the urge to fight and reject the information. Try to avoid giving in).
TONING –
Don’t fall for the toned gimmick. There’s either muscle building or fat loss. In most cases, it’s fat loss you need to get toned (apart from the few that are very naturally thin, in which case, muscle building is what will be needed).
Most women who use the expression “toning” do so without realizing that they are asking for more muscle definition. Toning is really nothing more than lowered body fat percentage. It’s about giving your physique that feminine look where some muscle definition is seen, so you look fit, but at the same time you’re still exhibiting curves in all the right places.
Here’s a little secret. Everyone – even you, right now, has great muscle tone. The only problem? You have a layer of undesirable fat covering that muscle tone, so you don’t see it. The real secret to getting “toned” is to just lose weight. Next time you see a program that promises to help get you “toned in no time,” realize this is a weight loss program. If the program does not come with a solid nutrition plan (a key element for any weight loss program), chances are it’s not going to be delivering the results that you want any time soon.
SPOT REDUCTION –
The lie of “spot reduction” goes hand in hand with the toning concept. The desire to spot reduce, i.e. take-off weight in certain areas such as hip, underarms, abs or other regions of your body you dislike, is based on faulty beliefs that by careful exercise selection and diet you can lose fat from one area of your body. It’s everyone’s dream. Unfortunately, no one ever achieves it because fat loss is a full body affair.
There’s no way you can tell your body to selectively burn fat from those jiggly underarms or that protruding belly. Your energy regulation system is not designed to account for vanity requests. The reality is, the place you most want to lose fat is likely the place it comes off last. Your body is not playing tricks on you, it’s just basic physiology. Whatever areas your body tends to deposit fat first is going to be your most stubborn fat reserves where your body wants to store higher quantities of fat. For women, these areas tend to be hips, butt and thighs while for men it’s usually the abdominal area.
You can spot build your body. By doing exercises for a certain area, you can most definitely cause it to get bigger, but you cannot spot reduce your body. Body fat will be burned off from everywhere over time. The only thing you can do is be patient and wait for your overall percentage of body fat to come down.
CARDIO BURNS FAT; WEIGHT TRAINING BUILD MUSCLES –
Since cardio burns calories it’s the best route to fat loss, right? Wrong. There is a big difference between gaining fat weight and muscle weight. Muscle weight is good for you. It is one of the best ways to boost metabolic rate and actually makes the job of burning fat easier.
In fact, weight training burns just as many if not more calories than cardio does when performed properly. It will have you torching up fat not only while you are doing it, but after the workout is over as well (for up to 48 hours!). This makes it incredibly powerful as far as fat burning goes.
The truth of the matter is that weight training is for muscle building or fat loss. Cardio training, unless it’s high intensity interval training, really has no place in a body composition transformation program. You can do it to boost heart health if you really want, but realize you can boost heart health through weight training as well.
HARD EARNED MUSCLE TURNS TO FAT IF YOU STOP USING IT –
Many people have been scared off by this false statement and some have even avoided developing lean muscle mass for fear if they stop working out, all that muscle will turn to fat. Fortunately, this is far from the truth. Seeing muscle turn to fat would be like watching an apple convert itself to an orange. The chances of that happening are nil. Muscles and fat are two completely separate types of tissue.
You will never have muscle convert to body fat – instead, you may lose muscle. What happens if your body does not think it needs to maintain the muscle (if you’ve stopped exercising)? It’s gone. Your body doesn’t like maintaining lean muscle mass because it takes a lot of energy to do so. It is that simple. The body starts catabolizing (breaking down) muscle mass when it’s not being stressed and soon, it will be gone. Your muscles don’t turn to fat, they just get smaller.
If you do must stop weight training for whatever reason (excuse), you’ll need to adjust your total daily calorie intake. You won’t be able to eat as much now as you were before, so you must cut back. If you do, you won’t gain body fat in the process. You will get smaller as you begin losing muscle, but you won’t gain fat. Don’t fear building muscle because you worry about it being converted into body fat. That won’t ever happen.
Combine your exercise program with a satisfying whole-foods nutrition plan that supports your strength training program and you have the perfect formula for sustaining a healthy slim body for life.
It’s time to throw away all the false statements you’ve accepted about dieting and exercise and learn what it really takes to take weight off and keep it off for good…
“Rebound Free Weight-Loss” can help you do just that…
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