🤔 #HealthMythsExposed: So, picture this – you’re at the gym, sweating it out on the treadmill next to someone who just can’t seem to stop talking about how they’re “burning fat” by keeping their heart rate in the “fat-burning zone”. 🏃♂️ But wait a minute, is that really true? 🤷♀️
I’ve been wondering – what’s the most common inaccurate health or fitness view most people hold? Is it the belief that lifting weights will make you bulky? Or maybe that doing a juice cleanse will magically detox your body? 💪🥤
Let’s face it, we’ve all fallen for a health myth or two in our lives. But now, I’m on a mission to bust those myths once and for all! 💥
Did you know that according to a recent study, a whopping 70% of people still believe that spot reduction is possible? Spoiler alert: it’s not! 🔍 And don’t even get me started on the “eat less, move more” mantra that seems to be everywhere these days. 🍽️🏋️♂️
So, dear readers, I ask you – what’s the most common health or fitness myth you’ve heard? Let’s get to the bottom of this once and for all! 💬💡 #HealthMyths #FitnessFacts #NutritionTruths
Leave your thoughts in the comments below and let’s debunk those myths together! 🙌💥
For example people confuse things their body is used to with things that are actually healthy/not harmful. If you do things long enough the body will adapt, yes, but possibly at a high cost for your health.
“I only sleep 4 hours per night and I feel fine” your body may be used to it but that doesn’t mean it’s healthy for you.
The supposed universality of BMI.
that certain exercises will target fat loss in specific body locations
Having a full face doesn’t always mean the person is fat. Sometimes it is genetics.
Oh man, where do I start.
– “Carbs are bad for you!”
– “It’s dark chocolate so it’s healthy.”
– “A glass of wine or two is good for you.”
– “If you want to build muscle, you should eat more protein bars.”
– “You should do lots of low resistance exercises to build (sigh) muscle tone!”
I could go on, there are just so many common health and nutrition misconceptions and it drives me up the fucking wall
“Cleanses” are dumb. I know a lot of women that do lengthy cleanses rather than eat right every day. 🙁
“Does x help me lose weight?”
You lose weight when consumed calories < calories burned. Doesn’t matter if you follow Keto, no-carb, intermittent fasting or eat nothing but two cheeseburgers.
that every body will respond the same way to restrictive diets and intense exercise.
Women don’t train upper body because they think they will become too muscular
Doing sit ups and any abdominal exercises will automatically give you a six pack.
That thin people are automatically healthier than their stockier counterparts.
Exercise alone will make you lose weight.
That they ‘eat healthy and can’t lose weight’ while having 500 extra calories/day in almonds and avocados. It’s a calorie game, regardless of the quality of the nutrition. Bonus points for thinking they can out-exercise something they ate. It takes WAY more to burn than to avoid in the first place.
That announcing they’re going to lose weight or posting a gym selfie that one time they went after 2 months is going to keep them on track.
Anyone I know that made big changes never announced it, they didn’t tell you, you told them. It goes for anything that’s going to take a lot of time and work. don’t get on a soap box because once you get all those pats on the back you trick yourself into thinking you accomplished something and it makes it easier to make excuses later.
Running is bad for your knees and joints.
At first, most folks start out like they know it all and go too far, too fast, wear the wrong shoes, use poor form and don’t stretch afterwards.
It my take me a bit longer to get going these days but I’m in my late fifties with no intentions of giving up!
Doctor here. Most frustrating experience is when parent’s decline the HPV vaccine for their daughters (or sons) thinking that it will make her more likely to be sexually promiscuous when they’re older. All it does is protect them from getting cervical cancer.
The grand majority of people really underestimate how many people are on some type of gear.
Not for everyone but the idea you can get into “game shape” by working out. I used to play hockey. Broke my collar bone. Out 6 weeks. I ran and did squats for almost every day while out.
My first day back on ice I was gassed 30 seconds into my shift. The next day I was sore everywhere. You can’t simulate a sport unless you actually play that sport.
That cholesterol is overall bad….
Starvation mode is not a thing.
“No pain, no gain.” You should be exercising vigorously enough that you can feel your muscles getting tired or feel yourself getting increasingly winded, but if it actually hurts, then you’re doing it wrong. “No pain, no gain,” has probably caused an endless number of needless injuries.
Walking sticks are for old people who use them all the time.
I’m 35 and use my stick most of the time. Some people I know use them only occasionally. Sticks are a medical aid that can be used by all ages of people for all kinds of reasons. None of which are your business!
Thin does not automatically equal healthy.
“Organic” doesn’t mean something is healthier.
Shoving extra protein into snack foods doesn’t make them healthy.
You don’t need to “detox” or “cleanse” your body that is why you have a liver and kidneys. You just have expensive diarrhea.
Basically, anything an influencer is telling you is likely to be 90% horseshit.
That you can get insanely ripped and huge from just eating enough protein and working out hard.
You can definitely do plenty on your own, however, genetics will only take you so far. Steroid use is more common than people realize.
If you drink way too much coffee and are jittery and afraid you won’t be able to sleep, just drink an awful lot of alcohol. That will balance everything out and you’ll be fine. (Also, vice versa works a treat too!)
Those quick fixes like gastric bypass aren’t a get out of jail free card. If you don’t change anything about your lifestyle, you’re in the same boat.
That you can just go on a crash diet, lose the weight, and be skinny enough to eat that cake again. Whatever change you make has to last the rest of your life. So unless you want to be on keto (example) forever, I recommend changing your lifestyle in general. Crash diets are better for people who have health concerns and NEED to lose the weight quick. If you can instead do a transition to living a different kind of life, you should, even if it’s slower. Try to live a life where you want the smoothie, not the donut. Or you want to go outside and do an activity, not take a nap.
‘Young people can’t be disabled’
Every answer will be why kids need to learn anatomy and physiology as part of school. Why don’t we teach people how their bodies work? Makes no sense.
you don’t need to do any detoxes. you have organs whose specific job it is to “detox” you
People seem to linger in extremes, when it comes to physical fitness; either you are a lazy couch potato, or you are a literal bodybuilder or marathon runner or something.
Most people need to stop seeing fitness as some unreachable commitment to becoming Arnold Schwartzenegger or some insanely shredded fitneds influencer. You don’t need 5+ hours a day or any complicated routine, to make yourself look and feel much better.
30 mins of exercise every 2-3 days can majorly boost the quality of life of any unhealthy unhappy couch potato or idle office clerk.
A woman isn’t going to lift a dumbbells and suddenly look like Arnold, no woman, or man will accidentally look like a professional bodybuilder, you are in no danger of accidentally looking like one. Every pound of muscle I gain as a woman is a hard fought battle.
Drinking water.
You need 4-6oz per hour that you’re awake, plus whatever you sweat out.
You absolutely do not need a gallon of water a day.
As a pelvic physical therapist, I constantly get patients with urinary incontinence issues who refuse to believe that the reason they pee themselves regularly or have to use the bathroom every hour is because the advice they got from a fitness magazine or family member could be wrong. I’m only a doctor who specializes in this sort of thing, what do I know?
Edit:
no, you don’t need to drink water while you’re asleep. And we recommend people stop drinking three hours to avoid nocturia, or needing to get up to urinate at night. Your body doesn’t need to use as much water while asleep.
So roughly 13 hours of 4-6oz daily, or 52-78oz, plus whatever you sweat out while exerting yourself.
Your typical person does not need close to a gallon of water daily. I live in Arizona and run 45 miles a week, and I still don’t need to drink that much.
That skinny automatically equals healthy. It doesn’t.
That fat makes fat.
That juice is healthy
That which doesn’t kill you often fucks you up in the long haul.
No one takes mental fatigue seriously.
That drinking copious amounts of water will result in an endless increase in health benefits.
Just drink enough water so that you are hydrated, more if it’s hot and you’re working out/sweating a lot.
People who work a desk job and do zero exercise don’t necessarily need to be drinking 6 litres of water a day
I think that it’s gotten a lot better but in less educated areas of the world (like here in Guatemala) this idea that if you want to lose weight, you need to avoid eating fat. Also, this aversion to learning to count calories really makes dieting much harder than it really has to be, oftentimes leading to crash diets. Related to this would be the importance placed on the weight on the scale, regardless of body composition changes. In other words, just worrying about weight lost and not at all about body fat percentage.
That being a vegetarian is better for you than being an omnivore
That walking isn’t exercise.
Cold weather makes you sick. 🙄
That chiropractors do anything other than hurt people. Don’t go to one. You may end up with a vertebral artery dissection.