5 Myths About Weight Loss

Myth 1: Cardiovascular training is the best way to lose weight
Fact: While cardiovascular training is important for burning calories and maintaining a healthy heart,the best training protocol is a combination of both resistance and cardio training. Studies in which subjects who participated only in endurance training displayed a transformation of type 2 muscle fibers into type 1 muscle fibers. This is a big deal when you consider type 2 muscle fibers are the fibers responsible for building bigger muscles. Type 1 fibers are endurance fibers which lack the ability to enlarge. Bigger muscles will translate to burning more calories because a certain portion of your calories are needed to maintain muscle mass.
Myth 2: You need to stay away from carbohydrates when trying to lose weight
Fact: If eaten in excess any calorie regardless of the source will be stored as fat. Carbohydrates are turned into glucose which is the only energy substrate your muscles will use for muscle contraction. You can't exercise intensely without an adequate amount of calories coming from carbohydrates. Good sources are brown rice, oatmeal, yams and vegetables. These carbs are considered low on the glycemic index, which is a scientific way of determining how rapidly your blood glucose rises when certain carbohydrate foods are digested. If your blood glucose rises too quickly and the glucose is not readily used or stored in muscles, it will be stored as fat.
Myth 3: You need to drastically lower calories to see inches come off
Fact: In-order for a person to lose a pound of fat there needs to be a decrease of 3,500 calories(weight equivalent of one pound). That would only account for 300-500 less calories per day if you wanted to lose one pound a week. This would only be 3-4 slices of bread a day, not much at all.
Myth 4: Weight loss Supplements will help you lose faster when working-out
Fact: Most of these products just don't work and are dangerous to one's health by artificially raising your heart rate and metabolism. The safest and cheapest way to increase metabolism is by exercising. If you exercise correctly and burn more calories than you take in, I don't care who you are....you will lose weight! And that is scientifically tested in human studies.
Myth 5: Stringent dieting is the key to success
Fact: Staying away from certain food categories will only last for a short time and in the end most dieters actually gain more weight back. Studies have shown that dieting of any kind doesn't produce long lasting results. Hence there is a new diet book every month that promises to be the only one that works.
Two simple rules to live by are: 1) A variety of food spaced out 4-5 times a day is the most appealing and healthy way to eat. 2) Exercise and portion controlling your food is the only time tested method that really works when trying to shed the pounds.