The Ultimate List of 35 Health and Fitness Myths and Misconceptions!

The Ultimate List of Health and Fitness Myths and Misconceptions! Click To Tweet

Health and Fitness Myths That Are Holding You Back From Your Potential

Today we jump into a myriad of different different health an fitness facts that are ACTUALLY health and fitness myths. These myths have perpetuated themselves through the health and wellness industry for ions!

Most have been started by the haters, naysayers and unfortunately the lazy people that try to hold back the people going after their fitness goals. I made this list to expose the lies for all of you putting your blood, sweat and tears into building the best physique you can!

Today I want to pull back the curtain on all the lies! So below I delve into 35 health and workout myths and lies that need the light of truth shred upon them!

Enjoy my friends.

35 Of The Most Common Health and Exercise Misconceptions

Muscle Weighs More Than Fat

My friends, no this is NOT true! That is like asking what weighs more, a pound of rocks or a pound of feathers? They both weight EXACTLY the same. A pound is a pound is a pound!

The biggest difference is the space that each on occupies. Just like it a pound of feathers would take up more space than a pound of rocks, the same holds true with muscle and fat. Muscles occupies much less space than fat does.

That is why a lot of times people will be frustrated when they weigh the same after working out for a prolonged period of time. They may think to themselves nothing has changed and that they are wasting their time.

When in fact they have burned fat and built muscle. This is especially true when one starts to first workout and experience the newbie gains where they put on muscle easily.

MYTH BUSTED: Muscle weighs the SAME as fat when measured in the same quantity.

Working Out Makes Women Bulk Or Big

Honestly this was most likely said by a woman who didn’t want the women around her to look better than her. And/or just didn’t want to put in the work to get the results she wanted.

It is extremely hard to build muscle. People think it is easy, but it becomes very hard after the first couple months of introducing your body to weight loaded stimulus.

The ones who get big fast are always the ones that are genetic freaks. One usually know when they are this outlier in the population at a young age. They are simply genetically gifted to build bigger, stronger and faster bodies at an exponentially faster rate than the general population.

So unless you are one of these people, which you would have known when you were most likely 10. Then you do not have to worry about getting to big.

In actually, with my experience training females, weight lifting will make women stronger and bring on a feeling of more competence and confidence.

The muscle they do build usually creates a toned or svelte look to their body, and brings about a love for weight lifting that ends up creating a great daily habit that allow women to feel empowered, which has been a beautiful thing in my experience.

When you build muscle and burn fat, you actually will look smaller even though you have more muscle than you did before. This is again going back to the my busted about fat weighing more than muscle.

It just occupies more space and when you build lean muscle and burn bulky fat, you will look leaner and feel amazing.

The bulky women that you see in pictures are again usually just genetic outliers, and they are dedicated to other sports that create the need to have that body type. They are also used as marketing to advertise to populations that want to look like this. It is all relative.

Don’t let this discourage you from lifting weights and gaining a sexy and healthy body that you deserve ladies! At the end of the day, you dictate what beautiful is to you and don’t let anyone dictate that opinion but yourself.

Women naturally have lower levels of testosterone, which is one of the leading factors of muscle growth. This alone will allow you not to get as “bulky” or big as males do.

MYTH BUSTED: Lifting Weights Does Not Make Women Bulky

Eating Fat Makes You Fat

First off, one of the fastest ways to burn fat is by eating a ketogenic diet. This is a diet that puts the person into a fat burning state by eating mostly fatty foods.

Now I said FASTEST, not best ways. I believe that the ketogenic diet is not sustainable to long term weight loss. Now many others would say differently, but most of these people are just trying to promote an affiliate program that they don’t really believe in and just want to make money off people looking for a quick solution.

Anytime you partake in a weight loss diet it is imperative to find a diet that works for you that will be sustainable over long periods of time. So you get the results you want while gaining the confidence in your ability to adhere to the diet. OK rant over!

Now again, eating fat will not make you fat, eating too many calories over you daily expenditure will make you fat. Lets say you need to eat 2500 calories to maintain your current physique. If you eat 3000 calories every day for a week, then you will gain a pound of body weight. Since 3500 calories equals a pound of of body weight.

Again it is a simple as that. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. These people are just trying to make money off of you because they know society promotes quick solutions.

Don’t fall for it my friends. Find a sustainable approach to weight loss and I promise you will get better and more long-term results that you would with fad diets. You will also feel better and look better.

Same with eating sugar. Eating sugar doesn’t make you fit. It is a micronutrient that when eaten in excess, will make you fat. Sugar isn’t the culprit! It is simply eating too much of anything, that makes you fat.

Ab Exercises Will Give You A Six Pack

Diet and diet alone will be the winning factor in exposing abdominal muscle. You can and should do ab exercises including crunches, leg raises, planks and bicycles. All will allow you to build good core strength and abdominal muscle tissue. But at the end of the day, you need to diet down to get lean enough to expose that muscle.

Targeted fat reduction is an absolute myth. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but can’t target fat loss in certain body parts enough to show off the muscle you have there. Even if you could, it would look silly to have ripped abs but a fat back.

I get that we all want that Greek god or goddess midsection, but when it comes down to it, you have to earn it but being a a caloric deficit long enough to expose you ab muscles.

Vegetables Calories Don’t Count

Again my friends, calories or calories. Whether It comes in the form of a piece of pizza or in the form of a cup of vegetables. Of course some foods are less calorie dense, like vegetables. You can eat a cup of vegetables and feel a lot more full then if you ate a cup of cheetos.

So lets break down the math here shown by Nutritionix include:

• A cup of mixed vegetables equals 45 Calories
• A cup of cheetos equals 160 Calories

As you can see, both have calories in it. Vegetables allow you to consume a lot more spacial calories than you would eating cheetos at a 1 to 4 caloric ratio. But vegetables still are calories and need to be counted in your daily diet in order to maintain weight loss if that is your goal.

Introducing a good amount of vegetables in the form of calories will allow you to hit your daily intake of suggested fiber intake as well as create better digestion.

You Have To Go To The Gym To Build Muscle

You can absolutely build muscle outside of the gym. Using body weight exercises, scientifically termed closed kenetic chain exercises. You can build a significant amount of muscle. Doing pull-ups and pushs, air squats, dips, certain types of rows, glute bridges and planks.

There was an awesome write up by Mens Journal that offers 6 different workout programs that all consist of body weight exercises that will build muscle when performed consistently.

Sweat More = More Calories Burned

Unfortunately the amount of sweat doesn’t correlate to the amount of fat burned during a workout. A great article delves into this topic. Essentially it talks about how one starts to sweat when our core temperature exceeds 98.6 degrees. The body releases sweat so that so that the water will evaporate off of your skin in order to cool you down.

Larger people sweat more just because they have more skin circumference then smaller people. As well as more fit people sweat more because they have built a more efficient cooling system from being more active.

It goes onto talk about how fat is truly burned, which is through fat cells to provide your body with energy, so the more you energy you need, the more you will draw from fat as an energy source.

Raising your body temperature through the likes of things like steam rooms won’t make you burn more fat. It will simply provoke more of a sweat response because your body is warming up so quickly. Which now we know doesn’t correlate to fat loss.

It can though be an excellent indicator when you are working out thought. That you are putting in the hard work to tap into those fat stores to start burning them for energy. Resulting in fat loss!

Weight Lifting Makes You Less Flexible

Again this is simply another excuse people have used not to hit the gym and has perpetuated itself across the globe. A great article goes into this topic talking about how working muscles through a complete range of motion actually enhances ones flexibility.

It goes onto say that in many studies done, weight lifting is comparable to static stretching. Or when you hold a stretch for 30 seconds until it releases.

The studies weren’t conclusive as to why this was the case, but the theory being that it was neurophysiological changes that occur during the stimulus coming from input from the brain, peripheral nerves and spinal cord to the muscle being worked.

The main thing to take away from is to take your muscle through the full range of motion if you want to optimize your flexibility through weight lifting. Partial reps aren’t shown to evoke the same response as full reps.

Exercise Is The Best Way To Lose Weight

Being a fitness advocate and personal trainer for a long time, I love fitness. But again this is a big negative. Exercising burns calories, you burn between 300-900 calories in a workout give or take depending on how intense your exercise session is. Intensity over length any day.

But if you go home and eat those 900 calories along with the caloric total that you maintain your body weight on, then weight wise, you just ruined the workout.

Now this isn’t taking away from the psychological and physiological changes taking place. Those are substantially important and one of the biggest reasons I advocate working out.

But again, you can workout and still gain weight. People do all the time, they are the ones you see year in and year out who look the same, or worse!

The BEST way to lose weight is to simply create a diet that you can maintain long term that will put you in a caloric deficit. There is no other natural way to lose weight other than eating less calories than you expend.

So the best way to lose weight is to diet the weight off and supplement it with your workouts. Track your workouts and track what you eat, making sure you aren’t going over the amount of calories you need to eat to lose weight. And I promise, you will lose weight faster than just working out.

Sports Drinks After A Workout

The only reason sports drinks, before or after a workout, are so incredibly popular is because of the marketing team behind those beverages.

They pay rappers, actors, singers and sports players to be the face of some sugar loaded drink and then drink it when they are sweaty, like they just came off of the field. A lot of these drinks have way too much high fructose corn syrup, food coloring and artificial flavoring.

Being that we all want to tap into our inner rockstar or professional ball player, we tend to reach for these drinks as well after we workout.

They taste great don’t get me wrong, but the best thing to drink to re-hydrate after a grueling and taxing workout is water, plain ole high quality H20!

According to Active.com, you sweat anywhere from 27.4 to 47.3 ounces during an hour at the gym, depending on how hard you are going.

So you need to replenish this loss over the next hour or so.

Also, drinking a protein shake or eating quality protein will help the rebuilding process of the muscles you broke down. Also eat some simple carbs will help replenish your glycogen stores which were reached upon for energy during your workout.

Fat Turns To Muscle

This is scientifically IMPOSSIBLE. This is also an excuse a lot of people use to not workout because they don’t want to stop and have their muscle turn to fat.

Muscle atrophies, it can’t turn into something else. It simply gets smaller after it hasn’t been worked for a while. One will gain more fat if they stop working out and become less active.

These are the facts. Muscle is muscle and fat is fat. You either build muscle and burn fat, or the muscle atrophies and you get fatter because of the lifestyle change of not going to the gym anymore.

They are two separate types of bodily tissues, one can’t morph into another unless you are living in a sci fi movie!

Morning Workouts Are Best

The best time to workout is the best time for you. Both when you feel physically capable and strong as well as mentally strong. It can be great for some people to workout in the morning to get their day going.

Often times the release in endorphins can send you shooting right into a productive day. Or awesome for morning people.

But everyone is different. I myself love working out at night. I feel stronger because I have had food in my system all day. I feel more mentally alert as well as sleep better.

The key to the best time to workout for you is finding a time OR times for you that will allow you to adhere to the regimen. This way you will be more likely to complete more workouts and attain longer lasting results.

If you are trying to force yourself to go in the morning, it will cause immediate and long term resistance to working out.

That resistance in itself will cause you to dread going to the gym, resulting in you missing it more often then you would if you went at a time where you WANTED to go. Or at least where more willing.

Go off of what feels right for you.

You Have To Be Sore For The Workout To Count

Soreness actually isn’t in indicator as much as we think when it comes down to an efficient workout.

First off, you can be sore because you aren’t recovering good or fast enough. This can be due to a host of issues, including lack of sleep, improper nutrition, mental and emotional stress, ect. This may give one the illusion that they crushed their workout, when in fact it has nothing to do with it.

Also if you are super sore, you can overtax the system and cause too much metabolic damage to where you are unable, energy wise to recover and crush your next workout.

You want to provide enough stimulus to where you are overloading the muscle with the right volume and introducing different types of exercises for body parts after your body has adapted to a certain workout regimen.

This will keep you progressing in the muscle and strength building areas of lifting and keep you from over-training.

Work hard enough to exhaust the muscle group you are working, but no further than that.

Cardio First Before Lifting

Performing cardio first can actually be detrimental to you giving it all in the weight room. You are tapping into glycogen stores when you partake in strenuous cardio, just like you would weight lifting.

But if you use some of that energy for cardio, then you are missing out on your full potential for your lifting session.

The best thing to do is to do a warm-up and a cool down of 5-10 at a moderate pace.

After your warm-up, go into the biggest lift you are going to do and knock that out first. This is when your glycogen stores will be at their peak.

In order to keep progressing, one needs to be adding one or more of the following variables: more weight, more volume or more intensity. You won’t achieve optimal results if you partially gas yourself out by doing cardio before hand.

Eggs Are High in Cholestorol

Eggs get a bad wrap. They are nearest enough to almost all foods to being a complete food group. They are incredibly healthy and can add a myriad of benefits to your diet and physiological world.

An excellent article was written by MayoClinic basically smashing the myth to bits.

It goes into saying how the effect of cholesterol in eggs have a very minimal effect on raise blood cholesterol levels. This myth, as they feel it so, most likely stemmed from foods that are usually served with eggs. Those of which include things like sausage, ham and bacon and the ingredients that are used to fry these food groups up.

That is how your cholesterol is raised, not from eating eggs. The studies boast the fact that MOST peoplecan eat up to 7 eggs a week and not let it effect cholesterol one bit.

As well as the fact that it can actually help you avoid having a certain types of strokes.

You Have To Go Heavy To Gain Muscle

After the honeymoon phase that we all love to go through and reflect back on as newbies where we are able to pack on significant amounts of muscle. You can lift pretty much however you want and see results almost every single week. Both in your body and in increase in strength.

But that starts to slow down and it becomes extremely hard to put on muscle

Negative Calorie Foods

The theory essential is that if you eat a food low enough in calories that take more energy to digest in the form of caloric expenditure then the amount of a calories in the food you are eating, then you could eat the food and still lose weight. Hence putting yourself in a negative caloric state when eating that said food group.

There are no such thing as negative calorie foods unfortunately according to scientific evidence.

It is often thought of that things like celery or lettuce are negative calorie foods. First off even if you did eat just lettuce all day, you may be full because of the fiber content but you have to consider sustainability.

According to Mayo Clinic, they say that only 5-10 percent or energy is used for food storing and digestion. Most of your daily expenditure is from simply your system working to sustain homeostasis.

These foods that are thought of as negative calorie foods are simply very low calorie and high in water. Thus making you full on less because of water content.

So the the naked eye it would seem true that these foods are better for weight loss. But not to be consumed as all or the bulk of your diet. They should be supplemented into your diet along with other healthy foods.

Are you going to be able to eat this day in and day out as your diet? Even if you could, you would be partaking in a diet plan that was lacking so bad in calories that you would be inducing the chance for tremendous health challenges that would end up forcing you to eat a diet that consists of a lot more than just lettuce and celery all day.

Also did you know that a diet to high in fiber can cause horrible side effects like bloating, intestinal blockage and even temporary weight gain! Just some food for thought for you, no pun intended 😉

Walking Won’t Make Me Fit

Walking can be an awesome start to getting fit. Not only will it burn calories but it will give you a good start into things like power walking and then running.

It will build a great foundation for future success. People think that they need to start out running miles a day right off that bat. But if you start slow and gain momentum, you are lot more likely to adhere to your cardio plan.

You don’t have to start out massively and turn the whole tree just turn a new leaf. And soon you will be able to turn the whole tree and change your whole life!

Machines Are Best For Beginners

This is a myth can really keep one from coming out of the gate like a beast! Machines force your body through a range of motion that is predicated on what type of machine it is as well as the settings you put on it.

This will recruit faulty movement patterns, especially in beginners. The best way to built a strong lean and powerful body right out of the gate is to use free weights and cable exercises.

These will challenge your core and work the deeper erector muscles of your spine, creating way better posture and dense muscle tone then if you did your reps and sets on machines.

Machines should be used to supplement your workout with supersets from other exercises that involve free weights.

You Need To Do Long Amounts Of Cardio To Lose Weight

This is false and I have actually read that you can slowly convert type 2 muscle fibers to type 1 if you engage in too much low intensity interval training, aka longer steady cardio. There are so many people promoting HIIT cardio lately and they absolutely have a great reason to. It has been shown to be way more effective than steady state cardio for people healthy enough to do it.

Squats Are Bad For Your Knees

This was most likely said by someone who was too lazy to do squats so started the rumor that now many use to justify leaving one of the best muscle building and core building movements of all time.

A study references the likes of American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) talking about how going doing a squat through the full range of motion will promote strength adaptions throughout the entire area the joint moves through.

It also talks about how many coaches world wide utilize the squat as an assessment for flexibility or lack thereof. And how doing full range of motion squats can “maintain stability for joint flexibility”.

When you think about it, we squat up and down everyday. When we get up from bed, up and down from the toilet, up and down from our desks. When not load an exercise that mimics daily movements so we can do so safer and more effective in our daily lives? It only makes sense.

The thing to remember here is to load the weight safely. Don’t over exert yourself. That is where injury occurs. Find a weight that allows you to go through full range of motion without breaking form, and do so for as many repetitions it takes to reach your goals.

Your Knees Shouldn’t Go Past Your Feet When Squatting

This leads us into another myth that is simply stated as a general rule that has now been taken as fact for all people that step into a squat rack.

There is a great article written on the subject that talks about how giving or utilizing this cue is simply just a quick fix to a deeper problem

The article talks about how people with poor squat form move their ankles first when performing their squat causing their knees to hinge forward. This leads to knee problems that give squatting a bad name.

The knee is just a hinge and shouldn’t be focused as the sole determiner of whether or not you are squatting correctly. If one is squatting through a straight path to where their center of gravity is aligned with their mid foot, then knee position almost becomes irrelevant.

You have to consider the fact that everyone’s anatomy is not the same. We all have different size femurs, some longer and some shorter. This will affect how far our knees go out.

The best way to squat is to perform a proper hip-hinge like you are sitting down into a chair. Proper hip hinging is the best cue that when performed properly will allow you to squat with correct form for your body.

Deadlifting Is Bad For Your Back

This couldn’t be further from the truth. The deadlift, when executed properly, will allow you to work the deep spinal erector muscles. When worked, they will strengthen and create better posture and avoid being victim to your shoulders falling forward.

The more upright we are, the less force is put on our body from our head not protruding forward.

Now it also is an amazing workout for the glutes. The glues are the largest muscle in your body and when activated will allow you to access your full strength potential. And I’m not just talking about inside the gym, but in life itself.

It is important for all ages to build good glute strength as it is interlinked with better core strength.

If you do the deadlift with poor form or with too much weight then you can handle, then yes my friends you probably will hurt your back.

Use a weight that you can move without compromising form. Maintain a neutral spine and drive from your heels when performing the lift.

It is more of a push then a pull. Act as if you are pushing the earth away from you instead of pulling the weight up. This will allow you to maintain better form then if you were trying to pull it upwards.

You Must Eat Clean To Get Fit

This is a myth I feel for for years. Unfortunately a lot of people think this is the case because this was the way, the truth and the light for decades for bodybuilders. Big names in the industry swore by eating clean. That is was the only way to get lean and build a great physique.

But again we need to find a diet plan that develops itself into a lifestyle change. Throw away the term diet as fast as you can.

You can still eat certain things that you love and still lose weight. Now I am not talking about binge eating on whatever you want. I am talking about having something small that you like each day THAT FITS into the amount of calories you need to eat to achieve your goal.

Now how do you do this? Well I’m sure you have heard of counting your macros. Well if you haven’t then I will give you a brief explanation,

Basically macros are macro-nutrients. They consist of carbs, fat and protein. By getting the correct macro-nutrients you need for your goal, you will be able to achieve you weight loss or muscle gaining goals.

That means that you can still eat a slice of pizza and still maintain your macro count. Food is food when it comes to calories. So if you eat a great breakfast and lunch and still have room to fit in a treat, you absolutely can and still reach your goals.

If you want to customize your macros and start a flexible diet. Go check out IIFYM.com where you can customize your own macro plan for absolutely free.

Being Out In The Cold Gives You A Cold

This is a great myth that was started by some poor little grandma who was worried about her precious grandchildren. Let’s just think of all the people on the East Coast who walk through the cold each day throughout winter because they have too.

Take New York for example. There is a big part of the population who doesn’t even have a car because financially it doesn’t make any sense. They have to walk to work and home everyday and everywhere else for that matter.

They aren’t sick the entire winter. If this myth was infact true people around the world would literally be sick all year.

You are more likely to get sick from the it being cold out but not for the simple reason that the temperature is lower than ideal. A article by Fox News talked about how the fact that viruses that causes things like the flu travel in liquid particles. Dry and cold clients simply allow liquid particles like viruses to stay airborne for a longer amount of time.

They also talk about how mucus secretion increases when temperatures are lower. Hence you have more sniffles and blow your nose more. This sis often mistaken for being sick when you are not.

So bundling up in the cold won’t protect you from getting sick unless you are wear something that covers your nose and mouth like a scarf.

Cutting Calories Drastically Is The Only Way To Lose Weight

This may work in the beginning but it won’t be sustainable at all whatsoever. Don’t ever let anyone convince you otherwise. People that do this unfortunately gain most if not all the weight back or even more.

When your body goes into starvation mode your body doesn’t function the way it is supposed to. Sense get dulled, your mood worsens and your level of vitality decreases.

Not only this, but your body will hold onto all the fat it can in order to survive. So you will essentially be torturing yourself for nothing. Sure you will lose weight, but it will most likely be in the form of muscle as you can only lose about a pound or so a week of fat without cutting into muscle stores.

Fad diets are called that for a reason. They are a fad, not a lifestyle. Do you want to create lasting change in your physique and do so in a way in which you retain the most skeletal muscle mass for proper life function?

Then do so by slowly taking calories out of your diet. You will still lose weight. Shoot for losing one to two pounds a week at most. It may take longer to get to your goal weight. But you will look better when you get there then if you crash dieted it off. And I promise your results will last longer if not for good.

You Will Gain Weight If You Eat at Night

This is absolutely absurd. Try this then. When it is about to get dark, hop a flight over to a country where the sun is out when it is setting where you live. Then you can eat that food and not gain weight because it is day time.

This is a extreme and funny example of how absurd this rule is. Your body doesn’t care what time it is when you eat. It cares about one thing and one thing only for weight loss or gain. That is how much you eat. Whether you eat all your calories at one time or you eat 6 times a day. Calories in, calories out. That is the only formula you will ever need to meet your body weight goals.

Anyone who tells you different is lying to your face and probably wants to sell you somethings. Don’t fall for it my friends.

The same holds true to a low carbohydrate diet being the best way to lose weight. Not true. This myth perpetuated itself most likely because ones glycogen stores are low when their carbohydrate source is depleted. Leaving your muscles look flat as we call them in gym world.

Body Weight Determines If One Is Healthy

Have you ever heard the term “skinny fat”? This term refers to one who looks fit, or at least isn’t overweight to the naked eye. But actually has a fairly high fat to muscle ratio. These “fit” people can actually tip the scale when it comes to being categorized as overweight or obese when it comes to body fat levels.

But to the public these people look fit. Also, the opposite can be true. The bodybuilders you see out there that are buff and shredded usually feel like garbage and are often times risking their lives and vitality to maintain that low level of body fat all year. Most of them are simply using steroids t to do so.

Shoot for a weight that you look and feel good at, that is low enough in body fat so that you are healthy enough to perform your daily exercise at an optimal rate. Going to low in body fat will compromise your intensity in the gym and going to high will make you feel sluggish and create longer workouts because of it.

Plus even for the people that are bulking out there, adding body weight through eating more only adds numbers to the scale. It isn’t working muscle so you won’t see a huge increase in strength just because you weigh more.

Food Hacks

Certain foods are said to rev up your metabolism or cause fat loss. Again my friends, this just isn’t true. It is a play on peoples desire for a fast solution to a problem that needs to be solved slower.

I just want to give you facts here. I wish this wasn’t true, that we could have a list of foods that speed up metabolism and check it off daily to ensure we burn fat at a faster rate.

But again, as said over and over. It comes down to how much you eat and how much energy you burn per day. If the number of calories you eat is larger than what you need to support homeostasis, then you will gain weight. No miracles, just consistent and long term dieting.

Weight Lifting Stunts Growth

First off, let’s look at a real life example of this. Kids on farms throughout the last 10000 years have had to help their family. A lot of the times lifting heavy things. There is no scientific evidence that says that that farmers children grow up smaller that I know of LOL.

There is an awesome study that talks about how this myth was created from kids who were misusing equipment and lifting to heavy, leading to growth plate injuries. But the study expands more saying that one is prone to the same type of injury by playing any type of sport. And with proper supervision, children and teens can and should partake in a strength training regimen because it creates better health and well-being.

If You Workout You Can Eat Whatever You Want

Unfortunately again it comes down to how many calories your eating a day. If you burn 700 calories at the gym and then go slam a big pizza, the calories are going to put you in a surplus for the day depending on what else you ate.

This myth was most likely thought of as fact because someone with freak genetics was able to eat whatever they want because they had a freakishly high metabolism. Not just because they workout.

I have had clients who workout a ton and still gain weight. They wonder why. Then I ask them to show me their diet. The real problem becomes exposed very quickly!

Vegetable Chips Are Like Eating Veggies

Not so fast. They are thought to be healthier than many options on the market. But when it comes down to it, they may be no better than a bag of Lay’s.

An article I read talks about the fact that these a lot of vegetable chips on the market are made with sunflower oil. This is a cheap oil that is used by most fast food joints to fry their food with.

They can be high in omega 6’s which is a vital fat for health and vitality. But they often contain levels way higher than the daily allotment and can be linked to obesity and cardiovascular disease when not paired properly with omega 3’s.

They talk about a leading brand being packed with sodium as high as a bag of Lay’s chips.

There is a nutritonist who is part of the article and talks about how people often times will eat up to two times the amount of food if they perceive it as being healthy.

So it is a big mind game for most people. These big companies undoubtedly know this and are playing to this mind illusion. Don’t fall for it!

The Longer You Workout The Better

You Have To Squat For A Good Butt

Squats can absolutely aid in building that big ghetto booty! Also you can’t completely isolate the glutes, you need to incorporate other exercises that target and isolate the glutes more so than what squats can do for you.

The best exercises for glute thickness and roundness are:

• Glute Bridges
• Frog Pumps
• Walking Lunges
• Stiff-legged deadlifts
• Glute-ham raises

Having A Six Pack = Strong Core

The two can correlate yes, but the thing is that in order to have a 6 pack, you need to get your entire body fat to a certain level. Usually below 10 percent for men and below 15 for women.

But this doesn’t mean you have a strong core. The rectus abdominis is what muscle the 6 pack is and you can expose it through dieting as discussed above.

A great article goes into what the core musculature really consists of and quotes the National Strength and Conditioning Association saying that it is all the muscles that control the movement of the axial skeleton in the thoracic spine and lumbopelvic region. Those of which include:

• Trapezius
• Rhoboids
• Gluteals
• Spinal Erectors

So building a strong core is done by utilizing exercises that not only hit the muscles that show the 6 pack but the behind the scenes players as well. Some of the best core exercises include:

• Deadlifts
• Planks & Side Planks
• Squats
• Reverse Lunges
• Deadbugs
• Hanging Leg Raises

Using these exercises in our workout routine will allow you to not only build the muscles that show your 6 pack, but also build a strong foundation for inside the gym and life itself.

30 Minute Anabolic Workout

There has been so many times thrown around when it comes to the anabolic window. Some think they even need to drink protein during a workout for best protein absorption and for peak muscle building potential. I have been one to rush home without saying bye to my gym homeys just to avoid missing this so called window.

Gym bros have most likely had the 2nd biggest role in perpetuating this myth. Second to none other than marketing strategists pushing popular protein drinks.

Yes there are micro-tears that need to be healed through nourishment. But a comprehensive study was done showing that you can still reap the benefits that coincide with post workout protein delivery and muscle synthesis for up to 3-4 hours!

Conclusion

So there you are my friends. The most common health and fitness myths debunked! Now you know the truth and as they say the truth shall set you free!

Let me know which one shocked you the most and which ones you knew. As well as if you have any to add. If you do I will add it and give you credit 🙂

Have a great day my friends!