Exercise and fitness myths: Get the truth.

Myth 1 – Unused muscle will turn to fat

Truth:  If you stop doing strength training your muscles will shrink and the smaller muscle bulk lowers your metabolism.  If you don’t modify your eating in line with your drop in exercise you will put fat on.  The muscle remains as muscle albeit smaller, you just put on more fat. This highlights the importance of strength training for weight management.

Myth 2 – You should always stretch before exercise to reduce injury risk.

Truth:  The most important thing to do before exercise or training to reduce the risk of injury is to do a warm up which literally makes you warm by doing some light exercise.  The research shows that stretching before having a workout has no physical benefit whereas warming up the muscles with light exercise shows a reduced risk of injury and improved performance.

Myth 3 – Exercise alone can overcome poor eating habits.

Truth:  There is an adage that “you can’t out exercise bad food choices”.  If you are looking to lose weight or get healthy a great exercise session can be easily diminished by eating a high calorie or unhealthy meal.
An average person would have to power walk for 1½ hours to burn off just 2 slices (¼ pizza) of meat lovers pizza.

Myth 4 – Exercising in the “fat burning zone” is best for fat loss.

Truth:  Usain Bolt, Cathy Freeman and Sally Pearson are all Olympic gold medal athletes in track and field and are extremely lean and would do next to no training in the “fat burning zone”.  Instead they do high intensity training which burns heaps of calories and it is this high calorie expenditure that is important for fat loss or weight control.  See my Web Site Blog of November 19th.

Myth 5 – Sit ups and crunches will lose fat from your belly.

Truth:  We cannot spot reduce fat from our body.  The simple truth is that because we do sit ups and work our abdominal muscles we can’t specifically lose fat from our abdomen or belly.  One study showed people who cycled on a stationary bike with one leg only for a 6 week programme not only lost equal amounts of fat from both legs but from other parts of their body also.

Have you heard some fitness or weight loss tip which you are unsure if it is true or not ? Drop me a line and I will let you know the true story.