Top 5 Fitness Myths Busted
When it comes to health and fitness there are many myths out there that could be affecting your process to reaching your goals.
1. If you exercise, you can eat what you want
It’s quite a common misconception that if you exercise, you can therefore eat what you want. However, as Raw Food expert, Suzanne Glasper, says in our interview last week: ‘You can’t outrun your fork.’ People often overestimate how many calories they’re burning during a workout and this can lead to over-indulging afterwards.
You don’t have to drastically cut calories (it’s not advisable to cut more than 20% of your daily calorie allowance per day) but just make a more concious effort to eat a healthy and balanced diet. We have plenty of tips to help you in our nutrition section.
2. Women should lift light weights only
Many women worry that lifting weights is going to make them bulk up and build big muslces (body builder style!) This is actually very difficult to do – if you think about how hard body builders work to get their bodies that big, it’s actually MUCH much harder for women to do this. Join Chloe Redmond in your Introduction to Weights programme to find out more and to learn how to add weights into your workouts.
3. You can target your fat burning
This is unfortunately untrue, otherwise all our problems would be solved (weight loss problems anyway!)
4. Doing ab crunches will get rid of belly fat
Even if you’re doing a hundred crunches a day, a six pack isn’t going to happen if you have a high fat percentage around your middle. First, you have to reduce your body fat which means plenty of cardio combined with strength training. You’ll have abs of steel in no time if you quit the sit ups and do some more of this.
5. No pain, no gain
You should not be in pain when you’re working out. This myth actually could harm you if you overdo it! While you could have muscle pain for a day or two after working out, you shouldn’t be in a lot of pain while you are working out. This could mean that you’re doing it wrong or that you have an injury. There’s a difference in pushing yourself and torturing yourself.
