To become a licensed medical doctor, you need to sacrifice years off your early adulthood to rigorous education and training.
Essentially, drowning yourself in 10 pound textbooks, tears, coffee, and student loans.
But to become a wellness guru/influencer, a beacon of health and fitness “information” that the uninformed turn to, in this age of unchecked WhatsApp groups bamboozled in their own echo chamber of ignorance, you just need to be another self-satisfied influencer looking to make a quick buck.
Anytime a generous amount of skin is bared on the internet, a product or fad diet often gets credited, instead of consistent exercise and a healthy, balanced diet.
There’s always a magic bullet or pill to their fitness results that no one has marketed tried before.
And would you look at that; the product/diet model/program that isn’t backed by any peer-reviewed scientific research, comes with their affiliate code, or is up for sale right in their shop…
Now, you don’t need to undertake a medical degree to be able to see through these BS and myths. Because we’re about to serve up steaming plates pages of health and fitness myth busting! Ready your napkins and dig in.
1. There’s a magic bullet, supplement, hack, or shortcut to 6 pack abs
“Get abs in 2 weeks with this 10 min workout” How about getting rich in 2 weeks by working just 10 minutes a day?
“Pop this fat burner pill and watch the fat melt away before your eyes” If those claims were true, I wonder why over half of Malaysia’s population is overweight, and why the fitness industry still exists?
Based on current literature, caffeine and green tea have data to back up their fat metabolism-enhancing properties, which are the main ingredients often found in “fat burner” supplements. BUT, it’s a huge but or should I say small?
Because, their effects are very small (100 to 200 calorie increase in energy expenditure depending on body weight and dose), which is rather insignificant compared to the calorie deficit that can be induced from exercise, healthy eating, and habit change.
P.S. As a caffeine addict himself, yours truly would like to point out that caffeine has indirect weight loss benefits such as giving you more energy that you are more active throughout the day and can workout harder! Just don’t expect caffeine to do all the work for you.
2. Carbs and insulin make you fat
As a person who grew up eating a traditional Asian diet that’s very high in carbohydrates; bread slathered with generous heaps of chocolate or jam spread for breakfast, and over 2 bowls of rice for every meal, that is a shocking claim to hear.
To understand where this myth comes from, just ask anyone around you what’s the first thing they will change about their diet if they want to lose weight. I’d wager 9 out 10 people would say, “Cut carbs.”
Whenever someone wants to lose weight, oftentimes they attempt to cut out “carbs” right out of the gate.
They cut out or drastically reduce the intake of anything that they think is even remotely related to carbs, such as nasi lemak, fried rice, nasi kandar, donuts, pastries, chocolate, snacks, chips.
What they failed to realize was that these foods contain more than just carbs, but ridiculous amounts of fat too.
They immediately credit their weight loss to the absence of carbs, when in fact it was a calorie deficit from eating less of those insanely calorie-dense foods. Aren’t we taught not to jump to conclusions?
I do wonder how the Japanese, one of the healthiest demographics in this world that also happens to eat a very high carb diet, would react if someone told them, “Stop eating so much carb in your diet, you’re gonna get fat.”
If that doesn’t put your worries to rest, there’s a literal mountain of data and research showing no differences in weight gain/loss between high carb versus high fat diets (in fact some even suggested high carb being slightly better for fat loss) and also the effect of insulin levels on weight loss.
In the US, carbohydrate intake has been consistently dropping since late 1990s yet obesity rates continue to climb. Do you know what else is climbing with their obesity rates? Fat intake. Shocker huh?
In this age of rocket ships and the internet, nutrition is science-based.
You can imagine the disappointment of the science community seeing carbs getting demonized like witches in the dark ages, while nutrition is debated and gossiped about to the point of theological/religious extremism.
Instead of demonizing certain food groups, look from the context of your diet as a whole.
Are you eating enough veggies, fruits, lean meats, legumes, and complex carbs? If they don’t make up 80% of your diet, eat more of them.
And how much of your diet consists of processed foods, saturated fats, and calorie-dense junk foods? Reduce, if over 20% of your diet consists of these.
If you do that and exercise frequently, I guarantee you that you’ll be losing weight faster than a certain politician losing public favor during the pandemic lockdown.
3. Doing crunches give you abs
Who remembers the wild west days where the internet was flooded with “6 pack shortcut” workouts?
Although we won the war against the “afterburn” zealots and “secret belly fat burning technique” ninjas, they left their mark, like the mines left in a warzone.
And now people are happily wading into the minefield, once again, in search of the lost arts of “burning belly fat.”
There are actual folks limping back into minefields on one leg with better pattern recognition than that.
Now, let’s just hypothesize that that’s possible. That would imply doing only crunches burns belly fat, and belly fat alone. Giving you that 6 pack abs.
So if that were the case, would an obese person have a chiseled 6 packs while the rest of him remains the exact same? Just imagine how that would look…?
Who’s that pokemon?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but this little pain now will save you a lot of pain and time in the future. Reducing fat at a certain spot by exercising that body part, better known as spot-reduction，
just isn’t possible.
Before fats can be used for energy, they need to be broken down from triglycerides into free fatty acids and released from fat cells into the bloodstream.
These free fatty acids to be used as fuel can come from anywhere and everywhere, not specifically just the body part that you’re exercising.
More importantly, for your body to lose fat, you need to be in a calorie deficit.
And exercising by itself doesn’t create much of a deficit compared to calorie restriction through your diet.
So, you can exercise and do all the crunches you want but if you’re mindlessly shoving down nutritionally-bankrupt foods all day, you’re just fooling yourself.
4. “I don’t lift weights because I don’t want to get bulky…like you”
First, what’s wrong with being “bulky”?
Secondly, you’ve insulted my entire race and culture, not to mention the countless chickens that selflessly sacrificed for thine holy gainz.
Thirdly, do you also not work hard because you don’t want to get too rich? And you don’t drive because you don’t want to become an F1 racer?
Fourthly, if you should avoid lifting weights like it’s the COVID-19 virus, doesn’t this also include things like groceries, laundry, backpack and luggages, your child, a laptop, furniture, and etc?
On second thought, why not move to the moon or outer space if you’re so averse towards resisting gravity, which makes you “bulky” because apparently growing muscle is so easy for you?
There’s your answer. Thank you.
5. “Cardio (jogging, cycling, etc) alone is enough to lose weight”
Cardio versus weights, this debate is one for the ages.
Plenty of research has been done on this and they both work. Cardio burns slightly more calories than weight training per unit time.
Though weight training burns slightly fewer calories than cardio, it raises your resting metabolism for up to 38 hours following weight training. Meaning you burn more calories afterward.
Also it has other benefits that cardio doesn’t.
Such as building stronger and bigger muscles, stronger bones, improving mobility, and muscles burning more calories even at rest, thus increasing your metabolism.
But wait, there’s more! Weight training gets you “toned”.
To put into definition the mythical “toned look” from the perspective of a fitness professional, it would mean having muscles that are sufficiently developed coupled with a low enough body fat level for the muscle definition to be visible.
Season said body fat and muscle definition to taste.
Without developed muscles that can only come from lifting weights, one would likely end up with a bag of bones or a skinny fat look.
6. “Exercise is a license for you to eat whatever you want”
“I was so good today, I exercised hard, so I deserve to have a cheat day…”
Do you cheat on your relationship and expect it to work?
“My fitness watch says I burned 69 hundred calories, so I’ll eat them back. Yay!”
Doesn’t that sound a lot like taking 1 step forward, 1 step back?
It takes an hour of running at a moderate pace to burn roughly 400 calories, but just a single pack of instant noodles contains 400 calories. So, it’s very easy to underestimate calorie intake and overestimate calories burned! (17)
We exercise for all the benefits to the quality and longevity of our lives, weight loss is just the cherry on top.
7. “Stretching before exercise prevents injury”
First of all, preventing injuries mostly comes down to exercise technique and recovery management.
What reduces the risk of injuries is a proper warmup, and static stretching is NOT warm up!
In fact, holding a static stretch for longer than 30 seconds actually reduces strength output. (18)
However, no amount of warmup will save you if you pay no heed to proper technique and your limits. Bouncing the barbell off your chest like a trampoline or attempting to max out on every single set is nothing but a one-way VIP ticket to the infamous “snap city”.
No one truly knows which came first, the fitness industry or these myths. One thing’s for certain, the general public’s pursuit for magic bullets and shortcuts to unrealistic beauty standards and flat bellies is never coming to an end, like the Kardashians obsession with plastic surgery. This gave greedy executives the idea for protein shake and supplement-only diet; and yours truly, the inspiration for this article.
