Top 5 Weight Loss Myths

5.  You Must go to the Gym Every Single Day to Lose Weight

The Quality of your Exercise is Always more Important than Quantity

In order to lose weight and most importantly keep it off, an active, balanced healthy lifestyle is your best bet.

While establishing an exercise routine is important, exercising too much will detract from the quality of your exercise sessions.

Many people are hesitant to even try to lose weight because they think they have to spend countless hours in the gym to lose weight.

Even if you love going to the gym, spending a good portion of your free time there does not sound very appealing.

The fact is, with a proper nutrition program going to the gym every day is not only unnecessary but possibly counterproductive.

Exercising too much can overtrain your body which will eventually lead to plateau or injury.  In order to lose weight you should disregard any of the weight loss myths and exercise 3-5 hours a week and lead a healthy lifestyle which includes proper nutrition and sufficient rest.

Your body does not burn fat and lose weight while you exercise.  You exercise for 5 hours a week while you are working, resting, sleeping, or watching TV for the other 163 hours.  Besides nutrition, quality workouts for your 5 hours a week of structured exercise goes a long way to ensure you lose weight and keep it off.

Learn about a Personal Workout Program

4.  Low Carb Diets are Best for Weight Loss

Carbohydrates are your Exercise Program's Best Friend

Carbohydrates are the primary source of energy for your muscles during exercise and the only source of energy for your brain function.

If those are not good enough reasons to have a carbohydrate rich diet you should consider the problems with decreased carbohydrate intake.

A high protein diet, often turns into a high fat diet because most animal proteins come with fat.  Fat has 9 calories per gram while carbohydrates have 4.

Most people who try the "low carb" diet actually eat more calories than before due to increase fat intake.

Although many people lose weight for the first couple weeks during a low carb diet even while they eat more calories than they burn there is a simple explanation.

Carbohydrates cause the body to store water.  For an easy example, look at a cup of water.  Put a chicken leg in the cup of water and pull it out, and the water level would be unchanged.

Put a piece of bread in the cup of water and pull it out.  The carbohydrate soaks up a large portion of water.  This is the precise reason why many people experience weight loss while on low carb diet, water loss.

Once carbohydrates are introduced back in the diet the water weight comes back.  This is the classic fad diet which causes people to lose weight and put it right back on.

Good weight loss is fat loss and it takes time.  Weight can fluxuate up to 10 pounds for some people daily!  This is why it is very important to take into account other variables besides scale weight such as body circumferences and body fat percentage.

Read All About Body Fat

3.  In order to Lose Weight you Cannot Eat at Night

Calories do Not Discriminate on Time

You will often hear that eating after 6pm will cause you to lose weight.  You may hear that eating carbohydrates late at night will go right to your stomach.

While often times a large meal at night will swing your diet into a caloric surplus, possibly adding fat to your body, this does not mean eating at night is getting you fat.

Eating at nighttime is often the result of eating improperly during the day, most specifically missing breakfast.

Breakfast has always been the most important meal of the day and for a good reason.  When you eat a proper breakfast your body is set up for proper physiological function for the rest of the day.

The reason why eating at night has been associated with weight gain is most of the time, people who snack excessively or binge at night have also been eating improperly throughout the day.

Read more about Nutrition Myths

2.  Exercise is More Important for Weight Loss than Diet or Vice Versa 

The Combination of Exercise and Nutrition is very Best way to Lose Weight

Today's aggressive weight loss marketing always places a higher value on whatever they are selling.  This is why this weight loss myth is so prevalent.

The latest diet pill will always boast, "Lose weight with No Exercise."  Workout machine commercials and workout programs seldom mention that in order to get results you must follow a proper nutrition regimen.

Whether it is due to the constant marketing or not, people also tend to put one or the other on a pedestal.  Human beings are best at accomplishing things when they focus on a single thing and this is what happens.

This is especially the case with people who look to use exercise to lose weight.  Focusing on exercise is a good thing, but overly focused people tend to neglect their nutrition.

The fact is without a proper diet, exercise will do far less than it could with a proper diet.  A perfect diet may do little for weight loss without a good exercise program.

Learn about Fat Loss Diets

1.  There is a single BEST Strategy for Weight Loss

Every Person is Unique and You are No Exception

You will often read in magazines or web sites about the single best way to lose weight.  The fact is, there is no such thing as a single best way to lose weight.

Sure if you eat more calories than you burn you will gain weight, but this means nothing to most people because caloric intake is often very difficult to measure.

You can burn 3500 calories (a pound of fat) on a treadmill in about 6 hours of jogging per week but what if you can't stand to be on a treadmill?

Any weight loss method which claims to be the "best" can most likely be considered a weight loss myth.  If you consider the fact that there are many different ways to achieve the caloric deficit which you need to lose weight and what you consider the best way may be drastically different from what somebody else thinks.

Learn the Complete, Unbiased Truth about Weight Loss

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More Weight Loss Info

Nutrition Myths
Learn the myths associated with nutrition.  You are what you eat so knowing what you put in your body is essential to weight loss and health in general.

Exercise Information
Click on body part of anatomy chart and find anatomy & physiology information as well as exercise videos and descriptions.