Busted! Don’t Believe These Fitness Myths!

Regular physical activity comes with a lot of benefits, from promoting strong muscles and bones and improving respiratory, cardiovascular health, and overall health. Staying active and fit means keeping your body functioning at a high level.

Staying fit can include any type of physical activity like walking, swimming, biking, or organized sports that can contribute to your physical fitness. However, it is important to choose a fitness routine that may suit your lifestyle and interests. At the same time, don’t forget that fitness is also about eating well. To fule your body to exercise and repair itself, you need to eat right. Consuming the right kinds and quantities of food can also help you lose weight.

Unfortunately, there are several half-truths and myths about exercise and food when it comes to fitness, and these can prevent you from reaching your goals. At Puravida Fitness, we have come across a few misconceptions that are mostly based on how much to eat, what to eat, when to exercise, and when not to! To dispel some of these falsehoods, we have debunked three of the most widely believed myths about fitness.

Myth 1: It’s easy to bulk up with weights
This myth prevails widely because some people see bodybuilders who use anabolic steroids or individuals who carry a lot of muscle. They assume that by just lifting weights, they will throw on a ton of muscle. In reality, clients who do strength training two to four times a week don’t “bulk up”; instead, they look more toned and have less pain in their joints as strength training fixes a lot of these issues.

Another fact is that it takes a lot of work to build a huge amount of muscle, especially in women who have a small fraction of the testosterone levels that men do. So, the truth is that muscle growth does not depend on the amount of weight you lift!

Myth 2: Cardio is the BEST way to lose fat
The gyms that “rent” cardio equipment and the exercise equipment stores have convinced us that the BEST way to lose weight is tons of cardio. This has been a “sacred cow” since the 80’s aerobics craze. With our clients, the MOST IMPORTANT factor is their nutrition. We feel nutrition accounts for 70% to 80% of their results. You can have a great workout and burn a lot of calories which can easily be undone by making poor food choices later in the day. There is a saying that “abs are made in the kitchen, not the gym.” We tend to agree with this as we have seen ALL our success stories incorporate significant changes in their nutrition habits.

Myth 3: Everyone must eat super low calories to lose weight effectively
This is another commonly held belief. The problem is super low calories cause the body to lose muscle which requires calories to maintain, which can result in lowering the metabolism leading to gaining weight back quickly and many times much more than the initial weight. It also causes Leptin and Thyroid levels to drop, creating weight loss plateaus. We see the BEST results in clients who slightly decrease calories below maintenance while increasing activity. It’s a slower process but maintains muscle and prevents relapses. Basically, we starve the fat while feeding the muscle.

If you’re looking to steer clear of more myths like these, reach out to Puravida Fitness.

As experienced personal fitness trainers in Lakeville, Minnesota, we have a combined experience of thirty-two years in training clients to meet their fitness goals. We offer individual personal training services, small group training classes, athlete-specific training, HIIT classes, flexibility or mobility classes, along with nutritional coaching. We have virtual options and live-in-studio options.

For a complete list of our services, please click here. If you have any questions about fitness, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact us here.