By this time, you know that you should never skip breakfast, all carbs are not bad for you, fasting is a dubious get-thin-quick solution with negative short- and long-term repercussions, and cutting up your food up into tiny pieces before eating it doesn’t decrease your caloric intake, despite what Alicia Silverstone’s diet-obsessed character in Clueless says. But just when you think you’ve found a clear path in the labyrinth world of fitness, nutrition, and health, a whole new set of myths, exaggerations, and flat out lies pop up, ready to thwart your wellness goals. This means that you have to be forever vigilant, separating the bad information from the good to ensure that your health doesn’t suffer as a result. Here are a few common fallacies explored to help you stay on track.
1. I should exercise in my “fat burning zone.”
You hop on the elliptical machine at the gym and study the console’s colorful diagram. Without making a single rotation, the words “Fat Burning Zone” cause your heartbeat to accelerate. A special zone that allows me to burn more fat? Perfect! So you accelerate, check your heart rate, then decelerate and peddle cautiously to ensure you never leave the fat burning zone. According to Michael Brazeal, Director of Fitness and Exercise Physiologist at the California Health and Longevity Institute at the Four Seasons Hotel Westlake Village, California, you’ve been misled. “Yes, at low levels of exercise, a greater percentage of the calories burned come from fat, whereas at higher levels of exercise intensity a greater percentage of the calories burned come from carbohydrate combustion. But the bottom line is that it’s all about calories and creating an energy imbalance—your body doesn’t care where the calories come from.”
Brazeal explains that when he measures his clients’ resting metabolic rates (the energy required to perform vital body functions such as respiration and heart rate), a higher percentage of calories burned come from fat combustion. This means that you would be in the optimal “fat burning zone” when watching TV on the couch or lying in a hammock by the beach. Obviously, that’s not going to help you with your health goals. Instead, Brazeal, whose advice is evidence-based and substantiated by scientific research, tells his clients, “Exercise vigorously. Get the most out of it.”
2. If I focus on abdominal exercises, I will lose inches off of my waistline.
Remember the video of the woman in the pink leotard trying to trim her waist by being violently jiggled by a vibrating belt machine? Guess what? It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. According to Brazeal, “There is no such thing as spot reduction unless you know a great plastic surgeon. But you can spot tone the musculature beneath the fat.” Performing leg lifts, abdominal crunches, or bicep curls will, overtime, increase the muscle’s strength and may change the physical appearance of the area. Your biceps may appear larger or smaller depending on your genetics and exercise routine, but it is the muscle mass that has changed, not the fat surrounding it.
According to Brazeal, “The best way to get rid of fat is by doing cardio exercise—long duration, vigorous cardio exercise.” So you can abercize, ab-tone, abdominalize, ab-crunch, ab-sculpt, and ab-burn for days, but as for losing inches off of your waist in the process, you better go running, jump on the elliptical machine, or take a spin class.
3. If I do too much weight training, I’m going to look like Schwarzenegger.
Many women like having a toned body, but don’t want a bulky one. As a result, we are suspicious of weight training, scared that the end result will be an overly muscled, Amazonian physique ideal for winning body building competitions. According to Brazeal, that’s a fallacy. “Due to hormonal differences, very few women are capable of achieving exaggerated muscle hypertrophy which is an increase in muscle mass caused by resistance training. Unless you are on some type of supplement, you are not going to bulk up,” says Brazeal.
