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| Myth vs Fact |
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FITNESS AND EXERCISE: MYTH VS. FACT There are a million and one fitness myths out there. For some reason, everyone and their dog seems to be an expert! I’ve listed a few of them below and tried to separate the fact from the fiction. MYTH: Exercise must be very vigorous to achieve weight loss. FACT: Any exercise, regardless of how vigorous it is, can increase your daily caloric expenditure. Combined with a sensible eating plan, even moderate exercise like walking may help weight loss or weight control, if done on a consistent basis. Of course, the harder you do your cardio, the more calories you will burn. MYTH: All types of exercise increase your appetite. FACT: Research has shown that appetite is actually more manageable after some types of exercise. Moderate activity that lasts less than an hour may reduce your appetite for an additional hour or two. Still, intense exercise that lasts an hour or more can increase appetite. MYTH: If you exercise, you can eat all you want and still lose weight. FACT: This is not necessarily true. If you are consistently taking in more calories than you expend, you will not lose weight. Individual metabolic rate, activity level, heredity and type of diet can all be important variables in the matter of weight control. MYTH: The best way to improve your fitness level is to exercise vigorously every day. FACT: More is not always better. Your body needs time to recover between intense exercise sessions. If you do not allow the muscles adequate time to recover, you risk overtraining and possible injury. MYTH: Abdominal exercises like leg raises and crunches will trim the fat off your stomach. FACT: Spot reduction, or burning fat off just selected body parts, is not possible. Thousands of people spend wasted hours performing countless crunches and twists in an effort to rid their tum-tum of its fat stores. Fat cannot be stretched out, or burned off in a specific area. These exercises serve only to work the muscles that are underneath the fat. Fat is burned off from the entire body at the same rate. Thus, if you are losing body fat through exercise and sensible eating habits, stored fat comes off equally from every area of your body, not one specific part like your stomach. Of course, the areas which hold the most body fat will lose the most in the end. MYTH: If you stop exercising your muscle turns to fat. FACT: Muscle will never turn into fat. Muscle is muscle and fat is fat. They are two separate types of specialized tissue that serve totally different functions. Training and exercise can increase the size or tone of muscles while not training will reduce their size and tone. Fat cells can shrink when your body burns more calories than you take in, and grow when they store more fat, which is often due to a greater caloric intake than expenditure. MYTH: You can get fit in only 5-10 minutes a week. FACT: Unfortunately, this is just not so. To achieve a moderate level of fitness, one should be prepared to devote at least 2-3 days a week, 30-60 minutes each session. However, even smaller amounts of activity will have a positive effect on your caloric expenditure levels. In this manner, some will always be better than none. MYTH: The more you sweat during exercise, the faster you will lose body fat. FACT: Most of the weight lost through sweat is water weight. Excessive sweating can have dangerous side effects, including, but not limited to, dehydration. For this reason proper hydration guidelines must be followed in conjunction with exercise. MYTH: Lactic acid causes post-exercise muscle soreness. FACT: Lactic acid does not cause delayed muscular onset soreness. Lactic acid is a by-product of ATP activation during the process of muscle contraction. The increased amounts of lactic acid are normally associated with the burning sensation felt in muscles during high-repetition contractions. Lactic acid clears your system about an hour following a training session, while muscular soreness normally occurs approximately 24 - 48 hours later. This soreness is often the result of trauma to the muscle and connective tissue from unfamiliar levels of stress associated with new stimulus. MYTH: If your muscles are not sore after exercise, you didn't work hard enough. FACT: As with "no pain, no gain", the person who came up with this statement was probably working toward a major injury of his or her own. As stated above, soreness results from unfamiliar exertion or with training following a long layoff from exercise. With proper recovery from this stimulus, you will experience less soreness with each successive exposure. It is not necessary to be sore after every exercise session to improve your fitness levels. Pain and injury should not be normal goals or results of exercise. MYTH: Vitamin supplements improve fitness and performance. FACT: There is no secret panacea for improved physical fitness. Except in special cases, large amounts of these supplements are not necessary. The massive doses of vitamins consumed by some athletes and fitness buffs could even prove dangerous. An overdose of any substance may have a negative effect on the human body. |
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