Just like every other section of life, a lot of misinformation and half-truths have led to myths being built up about fitness in general and especially about burning fat. It’s about time that we debunked some of those myths so that you can reach your fat loss goals without being sidetracked by pointless routines.
Crunches and Sit-ups Make Your Belly Slimmer
This is something that we have all seen overweight people do at every gym in the world and the tragic part is that most of them won’t really believe you when you tell them that even hundreds of those crunches per day are not going to make their waistlines any slimmer. Crunches and sit-ups are mostly core movements that tone your abdominals and give proper shape to the muscles in the mid-section. However, they have little to no effect on the fat layer covering those abs and obliques. In other words, you can have sculpted abdominal muscles beneath the fat from doing a lot of crunches, but you won’t notice anything until you have burned away the fat.
Light Weights and Higher Reps
High rep sets with light weights will not help you burn fat at all because it’s quite identical to doing long sessions of cardiovascular exercises without any real intensity. Now, there is proof that suggests you can gain muscle and strength from a well-designed light weight/high rep routine, but as far as burning fat is concerned, you are barking up the wrong tree here!
Eliminating All Fat and Carbs from the Diet is Healthy
This one might actually work and you may lose some weight too, but by no means is it healthy or sustainable. For example, does rice make you fat? It has the potential to if you eat it in abnormally large quantities, but that goes for every other type of food out there as well, including lean protein. Besides, fats and carbs are essential nutrients that the body needs to function properly. If you completely stop eating all kinds of fat and carb, you will lose some weight in the beginning, but only until you fall sick and get back to exactly where you started from. To do it right, decrease instead of stopping fat and carb intake completely, and get them from healthy sources.
You Can Exercise More to Cover for a Bad Diet
It seems like the most logical thing in the world when someone tells you that all you need to do to compensate for those wild weekend parties is exercise harder or get in longer sessions. The truth is that you cannot exercise more to cover for a bad diet and lifestyle because our bodies just do not work that way. You will need to have a well-designed meal plan and customized exercise routine to see any significant results when it comes to burning fat.
The worst part about exercise myths is that they misdirect people’s efforts and waste valuable time. This is also a reason as to why a lot of overweight people leave the gym since they don’t see any results from their misdirected efforts. Hopefully, you will be avoiding the four mistakes mentioned here to better direct your own time and effort.
Thank you for sharing such helpful content! It’s very important to find the right approach to weight loss because the result depends on it. Moreover, weight loss is stressful for both mind and body, and we should make sure the way we do it is safe for our health.