Top 14 Health Enthusiasts Debunk Weight Loss Myths with 3 Advises
When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, losing weight ranks high in many Americans’ lists. For some, the objective is toning their body, whereas, for some, it’s achieving a healthy weight. This is why the weight loss and diet control industry in the US is worth a whopping $72 billion.
As the industry continues to grow, the variety of weight loss programs and products continues to increase. If you wish to lose weight and do not have much experience, it can be confusing. Unfortunately, there are also many widespread misconceptions about losing weight and ineffective programs, as not all are suitable for each body type.
Do you want to shed off the excess pounds and get the ideal physique? Click on the button below to book an appointment with the best weight loss experts in the town.
the diet myths debunked and the crucial tips from the top 14 health enthusiasts as they debunk some of the most common myths about weight loss. The list is in no particular order.
1. Dr. Lori Shemek
Myth#1 Fat Makes You Fat: Eating fat is a key component to weight loss success. Eating dietary fat will not make you fat unless it is an unhealthy fat such as highly processed and refined oils high in omega 6 such as canola oil, soy oil, corn oil or vegetable oil.
Advice: Choose oils that will optimize your health and promote weight loss such as: avocado oil, olive oil, coconut oil, or macadamia nut oil.
Myth#2 Eat 3 Meals a Day: New research shows that eating 3 meals and snacking in-between meals promotes weight gain and belly fat. This is in part due to the constant surge of insulin – your fat storage hormone.
Advice: In fact, skipping a meal such as breakfast or intermittent fasting helps to not only enhance health, but encourages weight loss as well.
Myth#3 All Calories are Equal: Despite that all calories have the same energy content, this does not mean that all calories have the same effect upon your weight and health. Compare a 100 calorie candy bar with 100 calories of broccoli, they are metabolized vastly differently. The candy bar quickly raises blood sugar and insulin leading to inflammation and weight gain with chronic use.
Advice: The broccoli balances blood sugar and promotes cellular health due to its antioxidants and fiber helping to keep one lean.
Get professional assistance with weight loss!
2. Jennifer Ettinger
Myth#1: Low-carbohydrate/high-protein/no-fat diets are the best for weight loss.
Fact: These restrictive diets may result in quick weight loss, but they are not easy to follow long-term; the lost weight is commonly regained, and most importantly-the body misses out on critical healthy nutrients.
Myth#2: Skipping meals is an “excellent and fast” way to lose weight.
Fact: Skipping meals actually slows your metabolism and leads to overeating at other times, which both cause weight gain.
Myth#3: Rapid weight loss can be maintained
Fact: Restrictive diets may cause a potentially large amount of weight loss during the first or second week, but they generally can’t be maintained. Most of the “weight “loss is water and lean tissue loss, so once you returned to a healthy plan, you’ll gain the weight back.
Lose weight effectively with Mango Clinic!
3. Mareya Ibrahim
Myth#1: Eat Less Food: Cutting back substantially on calories may signal to your body that it’s in starvation mode, which makes it burn less efficiently.
Advice: Eat the appropriate amount of calories for your body weight, age and activity level, but focus more on quality in the right balance – slow burning carbohydrates, good protein and plant-based fats.
Myth#2: Avoid Carbohydrates: Your body needs carbs to properly fuel muscles and round out the macronutrient triangle with fat and protein.
Advice: Fill up on ‘clean carbs’ that come from vegetables and fruit that won’t spike your blood sugar, like sweet potatoes and other root vegetables, berries and apples to keep balanced.
Myth#3: Avoid Food Groups: Unless you are completely intolerant, there is a place for good quality dairy and grains in your diet.
Advice: Plain Greek Yogurt, for example, is a wonderful source of probiotics and protein, especially if you don’t eat meat. Single ingredient grains like black rice, millet and amaranth are full of fiber with trace minerals. The key is picking the least processed ones.
Get on the right track with Mango Clinic to lose weight effectively!
4. Charlaine Martin
Myth#1: One of the biggest weight loss myths I’ve encountered is that if you just follow a weight loss diet and get the right exercises, you will lose weight for good. The truth is, yes, you might lose weight, but when you reach your goal weight, you are likely to go back to what you were doing before your weight loss plan. That is when the weight comes back on again because a weight loss plan isn’t a maintenance plan.
Advice: You can’t keep living in weight loss mode forever. It is vital to have a personalized weight loss/healthy living plan that helps you lose weight, but also has a step-wise process toward a maintenance plan. I recommend meeting with a health coach and a personal trainer to help you safely reach your goal and put healthy living practices in place for your life.
Myth#2: The second weight loss myth is that if you just follow a diet and exercise routine, you will lose weight for good. It sounds just like the first one, but there are a couple of factors people frequently overlook. Proper weight maintenance is more than just physical. It is emotional, relational, and spiritual. Your childhood often plays a part in how you view yourself and where you find comfort or work out stress and anger. For example, your mom rewarded you with food for picking up toys, grades on your report card, etc. As an adult, you now celebrate successes with your favorite treats. You feel like a bad person because you “sinned” by eating those foods, so you seek comfort through food while you hide in binge-watching Netflix. Your emotions, relationships, and spiritual faith all can either set you up to succeed or cause you misery every time you try to lose weight.
Advice: If you find yourself on a weight loss rollercoaster, ask yourself how you felt when you gave up on the weight loss plan and when you went back to your old habits. If this is you, then it might be worth meeting with a counselor, life coach, or your pastor, priest, or rabbi to find out what is working in the background. Once you know, then you can work out strategies to overcome these obstacles.
Myth#3: The third weight loss myth is that you have no Will Power. The truth is that you do, but you choose not to use it. You will either do what you know you should or you won’t. I call this the Will Power versus the Won’t Power.
Advice: If you make a choice and stick to it, you will likely find success. If you have a setback or a failure, then kindly tell yourself that you will get back on track the very next morning—and do it.
5. Luke Worthington
Myth#1: The most common mistake that women make with weight loss is to focus their training around classes that are considered to be ’toning’, such as pilates and barre. These classes are very valuable for increasing core strength and for improving motor control – but they are not at all effective in changing body composition (so reducing ratio of body fat to lean tissue). These ’toning’ classes produce localised lactic acid – so participants feel a very real ‘burn’ in specific areas (usually the glutes), however, this burn is not an indication of the effectiveness of the workout, nor does it have any impact on either ruction or aesthetics.
Advice: To improve body composition we need to do a combination of resistance training (weights), along with being in a calorie deficit – this means expensing more energy than we consume – whilst at the same time maintaining an adequate protein level to sustain the lean tissue. This last bout is the hard part, and means the calorie reduction will typically come from the other two macronutrients (carbohydrate and fat).
In short – the secret to improving body composition isn’t that much of a secret. Strength train, hit your protein target, but watch your overall calorie consumption.
Get professional assistance with weight loss!
6. Scott Keatley
Myth#1 You have to be “All in, all the time”. Changing your diet and picking up an exercise habit is incredibly valuable but you don’t have to become a 7-day a week workout vegan.
Advice: Not only are changes of this magnitude difficult to start they are even more difficult to sustain and may result in a pattern of yo-yo dieting that harms your delicate hormone balance.
Myth#2 Eggs are the Enemy.
Advice: Quite the contrary, whereas egg yolks have fat they also have Vitamin E and when combined with the egg white help your body to create glutathione, which is your body’s master antioxidant. Keep the whole eggs to 1 or less per day and supplement with egg whites to help with weight loss.
Myth#3 Breakfast isn’t good. Your health should be one of the top 3 priorities in your life and breakfast is a valuable addition to that end.
Advice: Having a balanced breakfast (lean protein, fruits/veggies and starch) will help kick start your body’s metabolism for the day and allow you to burn more calories as you simply live and work. It’s totally worth the 20 minute investment.
Lose weight effectively with Mango Clinic!
7. Adrian Bryant
Myth #1 it’s WHAT you eat. Fat Loss is all about HOW MUCH or HOW MANY Calories you eat. You can eat healthy and still gain weight eating too many calories.
Advice: You’ll lose weight eating 1500 calories of ice cream every day. Yes, all the ice cream is unhealthy but you’ll still lose weight fast.
Myth #2: You have to exercise to lose weight. Not really. Your metabolism already burns at least 2000 calories per day. The problem is we eat way more than that and exercise will only burn an extra 500+ calories.
Advice: Watch HOW MANY calories you eat before you go overboard with exercise.
Get on the right track with Mango Clinic to lose weight effectively!
8. Monica May
Myth#1. You don’t have to eat less – you just have to eat right.
Advice: Losing weight is not about eating less, it’s about eating healthy foods filled with nutrients.
Myth#2. You can’t out train a bad diet.
Advice: Diet stands for around 80% of your weight loss efforts, and it’s the most important thing on a when it comes to losing weight and getting fit.
Myth#3. Heavy weights can only help you lose weight – they will not make you bulky.
Advice: Don’t be afraid to lift it up, the more you challenge your muscles, the more weight you’ll lose.
9. Christa J Clark
Myth#1 Count your Calories
In my experience if you eat a healthy plant-based balanced diet where you can count your colors and not your calories you can maintain a healthy diet.
Advice: Of course, if you get off balance this can be affected but then adjust things.
Myth#2 You can diet alone and not exercise.
For the optimal human experience, combine movement that makes you happy with eating healthy. It does not have to be to have a six pack, it can be to be healthy, balanced, and strong.
Advice: In my personal practice I include 6 days on and 1 day off. I love yoga, dancing, weights, walking, hiking, hiit, get a mixture of what makes you feel good.
Myth#3 Diets work.
In my experience, diets do not work, lifestyle changes do. If you put harsh restrictions on yourself from the latest diet, when you go back to eating normal, you blow up and gain more weight.
Advice: If you can find a lifestyle that works you can count on it through all the seasons, year after year. For me, plant-based living works for me. Do what works for you!
Get professional assistance with weight loss!
10. Natalie Kelley
With a past of extreme dieting, an eating disorder and exercise addiction, I feel as if I have been spending years of my life debunking all of the weight loss myths I used to live by.
Myth#1 One of the myths is simply eating less = healthy and sustained weight loss. After years of restriction my hormones that help with metabolism functioning were completely thrown off which has actually made it harder now to lose weight.
Advice: With that being said, I have accepted where my body is at and no longer try to force my body to look a certain way. If this is the body I now have as a result of fighting mental and physical illness for years, then I am proud of this body no matter its size.
Myth#2: Another myth is high intensity exercise = better than any other type of exercise. I now find that when I focus too heavily on high intensity exercise like extremely long runs and HIIT, I feel inflamed and bloated.
Advice: Incorporating workouts such as yoga, pilates and barre has not only helped me feel less bloated and inflamed, but also helped my stress levels and anxiety.
Myth#3 One of the most important myths though is that skinny = healthy. When I was at my thinnest, I was also at my most unhealthy (both physically and mentally).
Advice: Health can be at ANY size and I’m happy to say I’m at my healthiest and heaviest right now. Putting on weight has helped my energy, has boosted my strength, helped me be able to run and lift more than ever before and also feel alert and happy while doing so. You can’t truly tell someone’s healthy just by looking at them and their body.
Lose weight effectively with Mango Clinic!
11. Shannon Billows
Myth #1 – You can damage or break your metabolism
This is by far the biggest misconception in the fitness and fat loss industry. That you can somehow break your metabolism or slow it down so much that no matter how low your calories are, you cannot lose fat.
Advice: Simply put, if you aren’t losing weight and or measurements, you are eating too many calories.
Myth #2 Eating carbs after 6 pm causes fat gain
This has been around for a very long time and seems to keep coming back in cycles. Eating carbs or any macronutrient for that matter after 6 pm causes fat gain, which is completely false. It makes no difference at all when you eat your carbs.
Advice: For fat loss, focus on your total daily calorie intake.
Myth #3 You need to do cardio to lose fat
Is your idea of fat loss running for endless hours on a treadmill? Good news, you don’t have to do a single step of cardio to get lean. Sure, cardio burns some calories, but it is pretty insignificant to how much your body burns daily without exercise.
Advice: You do not need to do any exercise to lose fat, provided your calories are on point. I do, however, encourage you to be active and healthy.
Get on the right track with Mango Clinic to lose weight effectively!
12. Ryan Shepard
Myth#1 Supplements can help you lose weight
Advice: Proper diet, sleep, and physical activity can help your body lose weight. It’s not a linear process and you will fluctuate week-to-week but if you stick to it, you will see results.
Myth#2 Eating breakfast helps you lose weight
Advice: It’s important for us to recognize when we are hungry and to eat until we feel full. Eating breakfast does not provide any calorie-burning boost but it does help in supporting healthy weight management.
Myth#3 Diets help you lose weight
Advice: A lifestyle change helps you lose weight and keep the extra pounds off. This long-term change works because you make the weight loss last long into the future. Usually a quick weight loss diet fails because it is not sustainable.
13. Ed Stride
Myth#1 There is a best “diet” for weight loss
Now, I really don’t like the word diet, it implies restrictions and end dates, two things that rule out lasting results. When you hear about these diets they all sound radically different, they all have some new magic way they work and a famous celeb to endorse them.
Advice: What they all have at their heart is a way for you to consume less calories than you burn to create a calorie deficit (the only way to achieve weight loss) put less calories in your body than you burn on enough days so that you can notice a change. Even the most complicated plans are based on this, basically the best diet or eating plan is the one you are going to follow, the one that fits with you and your lifestyle so you will do it long enough for it to work, that’s the real key!
Myth#2 You can lose weight (fat) from particular places
This is the myth that has been around for the two decades plus I have been a coach. That you can work a particular area; let’s say tummy with lots of crunches to lose the fat there. Sorry but it’s never going to happen! Fat does not turn into toned muscle, they are separate things!
Advice: Fat is stored energy that forms a layer on top of muscle and obscures shape, the only way to get rid of fat is to put in less calories than you burn. Do that on enough days, keep exercising and eventually the body fat will accumulatively decrease enough to reveal toned muscle!
Myth#3 Endless cardio (jogging, cardio machines in gyms) is the best exercise for weight loss.
Being motivated enough to exercise regularly is great for health and fitness, but endless cardio isn’t the best weight loss exercise. The most effective is strength training type exercises (and yes if the gym is still shut where you are, body weight exercises like squats and press ups count!) Maybe it burns less calories per session, but calorie expenditure continues way longer after you have finished exercising compared to other types of exercise.
Advice: Plus and this is a big one, most of our daily calories are burned at rest (70%) so the more muscle you can preserve the more calories you burn doing not much and to dispel another myth; no ladies, you won’t get big muscles, in fact strength training type exercises will give you shape. You don’t have to jump around either, I specialize helping people aged 40-55 and accordingly I design low impact, high calorie burn exercise routines.
Get professional assistance with weight loss!
14. Kristina Janicas
Excess weight and the inability to lose weight is often a common complaint among many of my patients.
In my experience, there are different factors that influence weight loss. Addressing hormonal imbalance is an essential component to metabolism and fat loss. By assessing the thyroid, cortisol, sex hormones (progesterone, estradiol, dhea and testosterone) through blood testing , and achieving optimal levels will have a direct influence on weight loss results.
I recommend a diet targeting a calorie deficit from physical activity which can be an effective way to shed extra pounds once hormonal balance has been achieved.
Adequate caloric intake needs to be established to support the type of physical activity you should engage in. Working with a professional to assist with establishing a plan in achieving hormonal balance, and an adequate fitness regime with nutritional support is essential to ensure your weight loss goals are achieved.
Lose weight effectively with Mango Clinic!
Weight loss treatments and techniques vary from person to person. So, do not implement anything you see without considering your health conditions. Get in touch with Mango Clinic’s healthcare professional to find yourself the right weight loss program. Book your appointments today!
One comment
Jennifer Ettinger
August 4, 2020 at 5:16 pm
Thank you for including my tips in your article!