Fitness myths are a dime a dozen. It’s unfortunate that such a valuable industry is also so profitable. It’s so easy to market products and perpetuate ideas through ads designed to make people feel bad about themselves. Everyone wants to be healthy and feel good, that’s why it’s so easy to get lost and caught up in all of the ideas floating around about fitness. This list is not extensive by any means, but these are some of the most common myths or misconceptions I have heard.
Lifting weights will make you look bulky.
A lot of people, women, in particular, shy away from lifting weights because they don’t want to gain weight, become “bulky”, or look like a bodybuilder. To look like a pro bodybuilder, you have to eat and train like one. It is highly unlikely that you will end up looking like a bodybuilder without intending to. You may gain weight from lifting weights, but it’ll most likely be muscle, which tends to make you look leaner because you lose fat. Lifting weights is one of the most effective ways to create a higher lean body mass.
You just need to exercise to lose weight.
Exercise increases your overall health. It helps prevent diseases, keep your heart healthy, keep you strong and helps you stay mobile throughout your life. It is also an important part in long term weight maintenance. Unfortunately, you can exercise all you want, but if you don’t take a look at what you’re eating, you won’t see dramatic weight loss results. This isn’t to say that you can never have a piece of pizza or two, or three! Hell, I am writing this while eating my second doughnut. However, you should start eating some quality nutrients. Less fast food, alcohol, soda, sugar, and more fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, grains, water, and protein.
You can choose where you burn fat from. AKA spot reduction.
Have you ever been scrolling through Instagram or Pinterest and seen someone claim a certain workout TARGETED a specific area of the body for fat burning? This is a myth and a useful marketing tool at best. The truth is, exercise helps reduce your overall body fat percentage. So you can try to work out a specific area of your body to “burn” fat, but you don’t really get to choose where that fat comes from.
Crunches are the only ab exercise you’ll ever need to get a strong core and a six pack.
Crunches primarily involve your rectus abdominis, which is the large front area of the abs. If you’re just doing those, you’re missing out on multiple muscles of your trunk. The abdominal wall is what we typically think of when talking about your core. These muscles include rectus abdominis, external obliques, and transverse abdominis. The muscles posterior of the spine, are your erector spinae and multifidus (ACE Personal Trainer Manual, 41). You should be doing more than crunches in an effort to work these other muscles. Incorporate some side planks, suitcase carries, and hollow holds to work more than just your rectus abdominis.
In addition, crunches might not be the best ab exercise anyways. In a study commissioned by the American Council on Exercise, the researchers took 30 participants and had them do 13 common ab exercises (crunches included) and recorded their muscle activity with electromyography (EMG) equipment. They found that the traditional crunch ranked eleven out of thirteen exercises in muscle activity for rectus abdominis (Anders, 2001). I’m not saying you should throw out crunches completely, but you need to do more than just a traditional crunch and add other exercises to strengthen other muscles in your core.
Remember, in order to get abs, you should decrease your body fat percentage, which gives your rectus abdominis opportunity to peek through. If you‘re trying to get a six pack, you can’t just perform crunches, eat fast food every day, and expect results.
Doing a juice cleanse is a good way to lose weight.
Juice cleanses claim to do many things. For the sake of this post, I’m going to stick to juice cleanses as they relate to weight loss. Diets in general may help individuals initially lose weight, but they are not sufficient for sustainable, long term weight maintenance. In the article Popular Weight Loss Strategies: a Review of Four Weight Loss Techniques, the researcher points out that recent findings show “Juicing or detoxification diets tend to work because they lead to extremely low caloric intake for short periods of time, however tend to lead to weight gain once a normal diet is resumed” (Obert, Pearlman, Chapin, 2017). Instead of “cleansing”, adopt a healthy lifestyle, but start small. If you drink a soda or two every day, drink lemon water instead. If you’re eating out a lot, cut back. Add a serving of greens to every meal you eat. You don’t have to do crazy diets or cleanses to lose weight. If you’ve been eating balanced meals all week and you want a doughnut, get that doughnut. This is a lifestyle change, you want it to be sustainable. Be kind to yourself. Be patient. Change doesn’t happen overnight.
There are so many other myths out there! What myths have you heard? Drop a comment below and let me know.
Thank you so much for reading!
References
American Council on Exercise. “Human Anatomy.” ACE Essentials of Exercise Science for Fitness Professionals , pp. 40–42.
Anders, Mark. New Study Puts The Crunches on Ineffective Abs Exercises. 2001. https://www.acefitness.org/getfit/studies/BestWorstAbExercises.pdf
Obert, J., Pearlman, M., Obert, L. et al. Curr Gastroenterol Rep (2017) 19: 61. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11894-017-0603-8
