If you read health magazines regularly, you are sure to come across a lot of tips regarding to weight loss. Some of these tips actually work, and others don’t. The ones that generally don’t work are those that suggest fad diets, weight loss supplements and pills. The tips that actually work for everybody are always simple: that of diet and exercise. However, the weight loss industry is ridden with myths and misleading information, and people often tend to twist the truths, either because of their own advantage or out of plain ignorance. In this article I will discuss three such weight loss myths.
1. Myth#1: Spot reduction of fat is possible: Not at all true, and I am sure that any weight loss expert will unanimously agree to this. You cannot force your body to spot reduce your fat under any circumstances, no matter what type of workouts you do.
An example would be if you are hoping to lose belly fat just by doing crunches and leg lifts frequently, you will end up losing the muscle mass below the abdomen instead. So what you should do is to implement a healthy diet that would speed up your metabolism rate and assist in fat burning on top of doing the crunches and leg lifts.
2. Myth#2: You will lose body fat if you cut down extremely on your calorie intake: This myth has influenced many to go on a starvation diet hoping to lose their excess fat quick. Not many are aware about the consequences of such diets. These types of diets damage the body instead of helping them. The body goes into starvation mode when it senses that there is a very low or no calorie intake. This takes place usually when you are fasting or starving. The body slows down your metabolism rate when it goes into starvation mode. This results in the loss of muscles instead of fat in order to produce energy. The bigger downside to cutting down drastically on calorie intake is that you will gain extra weight once you return to your normal diet.
3. Myth#3: Cardio exercises alone will aid weight loss: It is true to a certain extent that cardio exercises aid weight loss. However cardio itself is not the only method of exercise that aids weight loss. For your information, the amount of fat you lose doing aerobics and the amount of fat you lose doing cardio is almost the same. But on the other hand, weight lifting does two things at the same time. It helps to burn the fat and also develop lean muscles concurrently.
I hope that this article has helped you to be aware of the misleading information about weight loss.
