Common Myths

1.  Abdominal exercises will flatten my stomach

You simply can’t choose to spot reduce fat on a specific part of your body, it doesn’t work like that.  If you have excess fat stored on your stomach, no amount of abdominal exercises, eg. sit ups, will flatten it; you might build some muscle, but you will not see it under the layer of fat covering it.  By understanding the importance of nutrition and cleaning up your diet, you will lose some of the excess fat from the areas where it is stored in the body.  For exercise, stick to weighted dead lifts and squats which work your core muscles better than anything else including sit ups.

2.  Doing weights will give me big muscles

Ladies do not produce enough testosterone to build large bulky muscles.  While dropping body fat you want to keep hold of your muscle, so weight training should be your number 1 priority as muscles assist in maintaining a healthy metabolism rate especially as we get older. Body pump does not count as weights it is a endurance class!

3.  I only want to tone my muscles not build them

Tone is ‘a state of a muscle at rest’, we can only work to build muscle or lose muscle.  Doing high reps will not tone a muscle, it will build muscle-endurance. To obtain a ‘toned look’ you need to drop your body fat and then your muscle definition shows through.

Remember: Lower Body Fat = Lean = Toned!

4.  I need to go to the gym to burn off my body fat

Although you may have been going to the gym regularly, if you have eaten too much over a long period of time, you will still put on weight if you are not burning off the excess calories consumed.

In addition to going to the gym, you need to clean up your diet.

5.  Cardio just burns fat

Everybody is different, but doing too much cardio can burn muscle in addition to fat, as muscle is an active tissue and burns calories just to stay alive so your body would much rather burn muscle to conserve energy.  Loss of muscle will lower your metabolism and make further weight loss much harder. Keeping your muscle mass is a pivotal point to healthy weight loss.  Some cardio combined with weight training is key.

6.  It’s harder to lose weight as you get older

Our metabolism slows with age, so the main reason why people find it harder to shift body fat when they get older is due to a declining metabolism caused mainly by muscle wastage.  Regular weight training to maintain muscle density is key to maintaining a health metabolism as we age. So if you maintain your metabolism it will not be to much harder to lose weight as you get older.

7.  We shouldn’t eat late in the evening

Your body burns calories all day every day, even when you sleep! It all depends on what type and the amount of food you eat that counts so be sensible.  A meal of protein and vegetables eg. a chicken and broccoli, would be a better meal choice than a heavy carbohydrate meal like pasta followed by a stodgy dessert.

Hopefully, you no longer believe these common myths as you now understand the full facts!

By Mark Alexander