Fitness Myths and Diet Misconceptions
First thing I wanted to do was go over really common bullshit fitness myths and dieting myths that I have come across.
Some of these are common and widespread to be known as complete bullshit. Some are less known and they took either experience to realize or reading through medical research information. I’m not a very organized writer so whatever order these come in has no significance.
Toning – There is no such thing as toning. It is bullshit.
Your body does two things really during exercise. You gain or lose muscle. You gain or lose fat. Now there is different types of Muscle fibers but they don’t affect anything. Toning or getting toned is a made up word. If you want to get what people consider “toned”, you have to lose fat. Doing really lightweight and super high reps to “tone” won’t really do that.
Speaking of fat loss.
Fat in Food (Reducing Fat consumption) – This isn’t how your body works. When you eat Fat, it doesn’t magically turn into fat when you eat it. Your body works by Calories In and Calories Out. Protein, Carbs, and Fats make up these calories. Taking in too much protein will turn into fat. I’m not going to go into a whole chemical lesson on how this all works, maybe in another post. But do NOT reduce Fat intake with the idea it helps you lose weight. It is important to have an intake of Proteins, Carbohydrates, and Fats every day. You need to take in certain fats to be healthy and additionally Fats help you feel full after eating. There is other positives too. But remember this. With that said.
Carbs in Food (Reducing Carbs) – Again, this isn’t how your body works. Carbs (complex sugar molecules) are necessary for your body’s energy and other functions. Please take in a balanced nutrition of Proteins, Carbs, and Fats everyday. Reducing any of these is not good for you or healthy.
Carb Loading – This is more of a thing for professional and competing bodybuilders. You won’t believe the bullshit broscience that these PROFESSIONAL athletes buy into. One thing they believe is that by taking in little to no carbs for a week or two, your muscles will look more define and bigger or something. This is actually not true and in studies on this exact idea, it was proven to be bullshit. It affects these bodybuilder’s health to where some collapse on stage. After a show they’ll eat a ton of food and notice a day or two later how they look even better and bigger than their competition physique.
Calorie Intake – I’m going to say that if you’re eating less than 1600 calories a day, you’re doing something wrong. I don’t care if you’re short, skinny, inactive. Even 2000 calories is low in my book for a young person. Metabolism are affected by calorie intake as well as body functions and your muscle condition. Naturally more muscular and bigger people need more calories. Reducing your calorie intake too much is not good. The body adapts heavily to whatever nutrition it takes in. If it doesn’t gets enough it conserves and works with what it has.
This is actually a very large topic and I’m not organized for this right now. I will make a post at a later date about Calorie intake, metabolism, and more.
Protein Intake – No, you don’t need to have so much protein that you’re shitting out beef patties. The body can handle less than recommended dosage of protein levels and still make muscle gains. Now I recommend you stay at recommended protein intake levels as you’ll probably make optimal usage of your recovery. That’s about 1-1.2g of protein per imperial pound of body weight.
With that said. It has been shown in studies that spiked levels of protein intake through the day causes anabolic activity. I’ll go over this in another blog post.
Don’t lift for more than 1 hour, your body will eat muscle after that – I used to believe this. But it’s bullshit. I’ve started to lift 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours now. I am making more lean muscle gains than before. But how is that possible if my body is supposed to be eating my muscles after an hour? Well it’s not as simple as that. Additionally you can take certain steps to prevent your body from eating muscle mass in these times. A protein shake or protein rich meal before lifting helps. BCAAs too.
The time of day you lift matters – No it doesn’t for the most part. It’s whenever you feel like it that matters. If you feel better about being in the gym lifting at night, do it. If you’re a morning person, do that then. When you lift does not affect your gains really.
However, with that said, beyond the studies, I feel like lifting in the evening or at night is beneficial due to you immediately resting your body. Rest is very important. But I have not seen many studies that prove this to be of any significance.
Spot Reduction – I don’t know if I even have to say this. Your body does not reduce fat in a certain area of your body based on your exercise of that body part. It will burn the fat for calories quite evenly around your body.
Creatine is a dangerous chemical – Creatine is not special. It is not a magical over the counter steroid. It is something you can get from normal meat product foods and exists in your body already. Also it does not aid in actually building muscle itself, it helps with energy levels and what your muscles use as energy that helps in lifting. In my opinion creatine is not something really worth spending money on. My pre-workout supps have it already included. But it doesn’t hurt to add it to your supplement stack, it can help.
Supplements are dumb – I thought I was not being taken into mainstream thinking about supplements. But it turns out that we don’t really get enough nutrition in our diet to meet our needs. Protein shakes and vitamins help this greatly. To say you can just eat the protein needs with lean chicken is not that simple. Our bodies are different than our ancestors were when they were hunting. We have larger more nutrition needy brains, larger and taller bodies, and our activity is less now. We don’t run for our food in hunts, we shop. Supplementation of nutrition is necessary to get what we actually need. It seems cliche, but it’s true.
That’s all I got for now. I’ll start writing down stuff as I think of them. I wrote this real quick and now I have to run to the gym. But these points are some of the most common and biggest fitness myths I hear about that is relatable to beginners, starters, and intermediates. I’ll be back very soon to write more stuff up. I think my next post will deal with my lifting routine.