Two Health and Fitness Myths You Need To Stop Believing

There are two old, but still widely held beliefs about exercising and eating healthy that are complete MYTHS. If youre trying to exercise and eat healthy to lose weight or improve your health, you want to make sure you dont believe these. Both of these MYTHS can cause you a lot of frustration and waste your time. Lets make sure that doesnt happen.

MYTH 1: You need to eat 5-7 small meals a day to keep your metabolism up.

I dont know about you, but the idea of prepping and dragging around lots of containers full of food everyday sounds like a complete pain in the ass, and not a long term solution.

Heres the good the news, eating lots of small meals DOES NOT keep your metabolism running high.

This myth comes from something called the thermic-effect of food. When you eat food, and digest that food, the act of digestion itself is a process that requires calories to be burned.

Because the act of digesting food actually burns calories, the logic became that if you break up your daily caloric load into small meals, you burn more calories throughout the day, by constantly being in the process of digesting food.

Heres the problem. Your body doesnt care if you divide 2000 calories worth of food into ten tiny 200 calorie meals, or two, large 1000 calorie meals. The energy used (or calories burned) to digest the total amount of food is the same.

Heres another way of thinking about it. You could put 50 dollars worth of gasoline in your car at one time, or you could put 5 dollars of gas in your car 10 times. At the end of the day youve spent the same amount of money and youre going to go the same distance.

Some people feel that have fewer cravings and more balanced energy throughout the day by eating more frequently. I know many others (myself included) who have steadier energy levels eating two (often huge), or three large meals each day.

Ultimately you want to find an eating strategy that is healthy, provides you steady and sustained energy, and one you can stick to in the long haul! But you DO NOT have to inconvenience yourself eating 5-7 small meals under that MYTH that you are revving up your metabolism.

MYTH #2 Spot Training.

If youre new to exercise let me save you a lot of time and headache. Spot training is the idea that exercising a specific area of your body, burns fat from that area of your body that you are working.

An example of spot training would be trainers, programs, and fitness classes claiming to melt belly fat by performing endless sit-ups, crunches, and core exercises, or a glute workout program that claims to torch and blast booty and leg fat away.

The truth is your body doesnt specifically burn fat surrounding a specific muscle or muscle group thats being exercised. This means doing the inner thigh machine won't specifically burn or target the fat on your inner thighs, just as performing endless crunches doesnt actually burn belly fat.

Dont fall for the hype, your body doesnt burn fat this way!

I believe spot training is one of the reasons people believe they need to workout 6 or 7 days a week, each day targeting a different muscle group. If youre under the impression you have to workout 7 days a week, dont worry you dont. Not only is this incredible INEFFICIENT and time consuming, its unnecessary!

If youre short on time, full-body routines are extremely effective at transforming your body, while being very efficient with your time. Focus on large multi-joint exercises like split-squats, presses, rows, and deadlifts, and you will target a multitude of muscles at one time. These exercises while targeting larger muscle groups also target smaller stabilizing muscle groups. Combined with proper nutrition performing a full body two to three times a week can truly transform your physique!

I hope avoiding these two MYTHS will save some time and effort along the way!

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