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Happy New Year and welcome back! As this is the time of year when some of you get very enthusiastic about fitness and health, we thought we'd offer some "direction". To that end we are going to take a look at 6 very common misconceptions about diet and exercise. Prepare to be gob smacked!
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Misconception number 1...Whole grains are good for you
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Despite the fact that grains are in many different foods most of you would look and feel much better if you did not eat them. This means no bread, pasta, breakfast cereals, cakes, cookies or anything else that contains grains. Try cutting ALL grains from your diet for 2 weeks and see how you feel. For some of you it will be truly life changing!
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Misconception number 2...Aerobic training is bad for you and it's much better to do anaerobic training if you want to lose body fat
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This nonsense has been flying around for about 10 years now in various forms. The bottom line is that we all need regular aerobic exercise. It will help you feel more energetic and the associated oxygenation of tissue will help your entire body function better. For some of you a 30min brisk walk every day may be all that is needed. Others may need a more aggressive prescription in order to balance out all the anaerobic training that they do. If your goal is to lose body fat but you have not exercised in years then you need to start with gentle aerobic exercise. Interval training will cause injury and possibly illness depending on how unfit you are and how bad your eating and sleeping habits are. You can always add high intensity exercise later once you have prepared your tissue with low intensity aerobic training.
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Misconception number 3...Cutting fat from your diet is healthy
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This is a candidate for the "worst piece of advice ever given to a human being". Fat does not make you fat...sugar and things that turn to sugar in your body very quickly after you swallow them (like grains!) make you fat. You need fat to make hormones with. If you try to eat a "low fat" diet you WILL become a hormonal mess eventually. This is one of the reasons that so many people nowadays are on thyroid hormone, testosterone, progesterone, oestrogen etc. Your body is quite capable of making these hormones IF YOUR DIET PROVIDES THE NECESSARY PRE CURSORS.
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Misconception number 4...Exercising 3 days a week is all I need to be healthy
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It is vital that you move your body EVERY DAY. It is equally important to minimize sitting. A study published in 2013 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine showed that sitting damages DNA and might diminish life span. The effect of sitting on your spinal health is universally acknowledged to be catastrophic. People in the modern age are so sendentary and sit for so many hours each day that unless you exercise DAILY you are probably not moving enough to counter the horrible effects of sitting. A big step in the right direction is to stand up when you are at your desk.
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Misconception number 5...Eat lots of fruit and veggies
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The problem with fruit is that ALL the calories come from sugar (fructose). Fructose is converted to triglycerides and glucose in your liver. If you have a high triglyceride count it makes no sense to eat fruit. Equally, if your haemoglobin A1C is high it makes no sense to eat fruit.
Most of you would be far better off if you ate LESS fruit and MORE veggies.
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Misconception number 6...The best way to get rid of belly fat is to do ab work
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It does not matter how many crunches, reverse crunches, sit ups, pelvic tilts, knee raises etc you do, you will NOT get rid of belly fat unless you work on your diet, sleep and stress levels.
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We hope you found some of that useful. If you need help with sorting out a diet and exercise plan, or if you have aches and pains that aren't going away, we are here to help. Here's to a great 2015!
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