There are two old, but still widely held beliefs about exercising and eating healthy that are complete MYTHS. If you’re trying to exercise and eat healthy to lose weight or improve your health, you want to make sure you don’t believe these. Both of these MYTHS can cause you a lot of frustration and waste your time. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen.
MYTH 1: You need to eat 5-7 small meals a day to “keep your metabolism up.”
I don’t 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.
Here’s 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.
Here’s the problem. Your body doesn’t 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.
Here’s 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 you’ve spent the same amount of money and you’re 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 you’re 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 doesn’t specifically “burn” fat surrounding a specific muscle or muscle group that’s 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 doesn’t actually “burn” belly fat.
Don’t fall for the hype, your body doesn’t “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 you’re under the impression you have to workout 7 days a week, don’t worry you don’t. Not only is this incredible INEFFICIENT and time consuming, it’s unnecessary!
If you’re 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!