Top 5 fitness myths – debunked

Welcome back to another episode of how to twenty-something where today I’m going to be jumping into the fitness side of life and debunking what I consider to be the top five fitness myths

I figured it’s been a minute since I’ve talked about health related topics and if you’ve been listening for quite some time, or just know me personally, then you know that outside of my coaching business I am a personal trainer

I actually got into personal training before I got into coaching, my passion for the fitness space and helping other people led me to coaching with the idea that coaching would support my personal training endeavors

Little did I know it would wind up being the other way around where personal training is supporting my coaching business

Don’t get me wrong, i thoroughly enjoy personal training, even the early early mornings and having a full day of work before noon, but my heart and soul belongs to life coaching

That being said, whether it’s personal training or coaching, I want to help you take better care of yourself and that begins with debunking the beliefs you might have around fitness

And of course, i would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t remind you that if you want to learn how to take better care of yourself I do offer online nutrition coaching that comes with workout programming

So if that is of any interest to you and you’re wondering how I can help you, then click the let’s chat link in the show notes and we can talk about your goals and if stepping into a coaching partnership with me is your best next step

But these myths i’m about to run through are common conversations I have with gym goers or what I see in Facebook groups where people have a misconstrued view on what a workout does for you and what constitutes a good workout

A lot of people fall out of fitness because they burn themselves out with the belief that they need to be torturing their body for an hour straight and leave the gym crawling out the door otherwise it wasn’t quote unquote effective

None of that is true, so hopefully after you hear these five fitness myths debunked you’ll be able to heal your relationship to fitness and the way it supports your life, not detracts from it

Now, diving into the first myth, that actually came up in conversation with one of my clients at the time of me planning out this episode, is you need to be sweating to deem a workout as good or effective

The truth: sweat is not an indicator of a good workout

Yes it makes you feel like you’re working hard and if you’re not sweating you’re made to believe that your workout wasn’t effective or it was too easy

But allow me to enlighten you… All sweating is is your body’s mechanism for cooling yourself down

When your internal body temperature rises, your body produces sweat as a way to regulate your temperature back down

Think about when you are sick and have a fever, you go through different process of sweating and freezing because your body is working overtime trying to cool itself down

You didn’t workout and yet you’re sweating solely because of your body’s natural response to regulate its temperature

So if you can sweat by doing nothing besides sit on the couch, then how can you say that sweat is a determinant for how effective your workout was

Besides, people’s level of sweat is genetic

I know people who hardly sweat at all and people who sweat so much they have a puddle around them after one pull-up

Then throw in other factors like the temperature outside, the level of humidity, how hydrated you are, what clothes you’re wearing, etc

You could strength train in an air conditioned gym and not break a single drop of sweat or you could go for a walk on a hot summer day and be totally drenched, that doesn’t mean your walk was any more effective than your lift

In fact, your walk wasn’t more effective, it provided a different benefit from your lift 

Both are good, but both are different, especially when it comes to the physique you’re after

Bringing me to myth number 2: you can spot reduce fat and on that topic muscle replaces fat

The truth: you cannot spot reduce fat.. You can’t do 5 million crunches and squats and have your fat melt off in those specific areas 

And muscle and fat are two different tissues, they are not interchangeable where you gain one and lose the other

They are, however, related, in the fact that you can put on more muscle, more muscle increases your metabolism because it is a more expensive tissue.. Meaning your body has to work harder to maintain it

Your body working harder translates to calories burned at rest and if you’re strength training you are telling your body it is in an environment where it needs to be able to lift heavy things and therefore needs to prioritize keeping the muscle on your body so your body will need to get its energy from somewhere else

That somewhere else is the fat on your body

So your muscle and fat are related but they do not replace one another or turn into one another

I would tell my nutrition and personal training clients that while you cannot spot reduce fat you can spot build muscle.. And now that you know these are two different systems in your body, you can infer that you can build the muscle you want in certain areas and still have a layer of fat residing on top

Another important thing to note it how your body decides to lose fat is going to vary from person to person

Statistically speaking, for males the last place they will lose fat is in their lower abdomen and for females it’s your love handles but that doesn’t ring true for everyone either 

People lose fat at different rates and build muscle at different rates and in different spots more easily than others

I know my biceps grow the second I look at some dumbbells but my quads are stubborn as hell

One of my clients focus is to build her glutes and she is not genetically blessed with a booty but she’ll see someone at the gym who is and be like I want their butt, male or female, doesn’t matter, she sees something she is lacking that comes much easier for another person and thinks, why can’t that happen to me

And it’s solely genetics, that doesn’t mean we can’t grow her glutes, but it does mean the growth is capped to a certain extent because of her genetics

So when it comes to being realistic about your body, take everything into consideration, your genetic capabilities, your exercise regimen, your history as in athletics, how long you’ve been strength training, and what you’re eating

Jumping into myth number 3 – no pun intended but it is cardio is the best way to lose weight

Technically, TECHNICALLY, this is true and not a myth but the way you’re thinking about it is backwards

You’re thinking that more cardio, the more your heart is racing, the heart rate zone you’re working out in, means the more effective your workout is with helping you burn fat and therefore lose weight

Yes, the law of thermodynamics states that you need to burn more calories than you consume, so you hear that and think great cardio helps me burn more calories and therefore I will lose weight

But honey, there is so much more that goes into that because if it were that simple, me and all of the other nutrition coaches in the world would be out of job

The metabolism is just as undiscovered as the deep ocean.. We just don’t know everything about it, it’s extremely complicated when you break it down

Cardio helps with heart health and burning calories HOWEVER your body adapts to whatever you tell it to do

So theoretically speaking, let’s say you run one mile a day every day.. The first time you run you’ll burn 100 calories.. These are arbitrary numbers

The second time you run you’ll burn 98 calories

The third time 96, the fourth 94

Your body is going to be better at preserving calories expended when you’re giving it the same stimulus.. It’s the process of adaptation

Our bodies are outdated in that we have the exact same system from prehistoric times we just have a drastically different lifestyle

Where thousands of years ago, honestly even 100 years ago, movement was built into our day 

Now we have to schedule it in

What that means from a calories in calories out standpoint is your body doesn’t understand that you are running for health or if you’re believing the myth that cardio helps you lose weight, then to lose weight

Your body thinks, dear god I am running for my life, or in other words, I am unsafe, I need to bare down and conserve calories because if I’m running that means i don’t have time to sit and eat something

Remember how I said muscle is expensive tissue? Well if you’re running your body is going to get rid of what’s weighing it down or holding it back.. Basically what’s costing it a lot of calories

So it’ll take energy from your muscles.. Break them down, so you can run

Leaving you with a skinny fat appearance  

Your body’s number one mission is to keep you alive and it’s going to do everything in its power to do so, even if that means keeping unwanted fat on 

It doesn’t understand that you’re doing cardio for aesthetics

What you want to be doing is strength train and walk – not 20,000 steps, but maybe 8-10,000 a day because that will help you develop a defined or toned body not a flappy one

On the topic of strength training, i’ve mentioned this in episodes from a while ago when I did a slew of fitness and health related topics, but myth number 4 is no pain, no gain

Meaning, soreness does not mean you gained all this muscle

Soreness is actually your body’s way of telling you, you did too much

Soreness, also referred to as DOMS which stands for day after muscle soreness, is a feeling of stiffness or tenderness preceding a workout, anywhere from 1-3 days later

It’s hard to fully grasp because soreness feels kind of good, it’s that reassurance that you put in work and will be seeing results

But that’s not what soreness is, it does not guarantee results and too much soreness will actually have the adverse effects of no gains

So you’ll have all pain and no gain

Chronic soreness reflects your recoverability and can be influenced by hydration levels, not giving your body adequate time to rest, not fueling your body enough or properly, and not sleeping

You should not be striving for soreness after every workout 

You will, however, probably experience some, emphasis on some, soreness when you change up your exercises or if you push the weight more than usual

Because you’re changing the stimulus you’re sending to your body

And if you’re following a proper program, you’ll most likely be sore the first time you change things up and then as you repeat those exercises over the following weeks, your soreness should dissipate

That is if you’re allowing your body time to recover and fueling it properly

I tell my clients I want you to have to search for your soreness

What that means is you’re not getting out of bed and being like ‘oh my god, i can barely walk’ or even grunt to get on and off the toilet

Instead you’re living you’re life and maybe you go reach for something on the top shelf and think ooh i feel my shoulder, i worked my shoulders yesterday

So your soreness doesn’t interfere with your day to day life, but you still can find it if you move a certain way

Aim for feeling good post workout, not crawling out of the gym post leg day but having energy to carry on with your day because you feel good

Your workout should give you energy, not take it away.. If you feel like you need to lay down, take a nap, cancel all plans for the rest of the day, then you did too much and you need to dial it back next time

So a bonus myth to throw in here before I go into the real fifth one is ‘I don’t have the energy to workout so I’m not going to’

This one is tricky, because yes take a rest day if you’re tired, but this myth mainly applies to the person who blows off their workout and is inconsistent in the gym then says they don’t have the energy for a workout so they skip it

I’ve had clients say this to me in the past, but then always feels so much better after they do their workout

Because it’s the right dose and fed their body instead of detracted from it

If you are constantly pushing yourself to the max, you’re going to be tired because you’re teetering overtraining 

If you’re undertrained and are tired after a long work day, i’m going to bomp you on the head, could’ve had a v8 style and tell you no shit sherlock

Energy begets energy so if you don’t move your body, your body is like cool i don’t need to produce energy for extra activity because there is none

On the flip side, moving your body gives you energy because now your body is like oh i need energy to do these things

And the more consistent you are at moving your body, the more energy you’re going to have to do so 

There’s a saying that goes if you need something done, give it to a busy mom and that’s because they are so on the go they get everything done

Now that is the extreme, but think about days where you have so much going on, you end up accomplishing like 10 things, versus the days where you have nothing going on and it takes you the whole day to complete 3 tasks

Why? Because energy begets energy! An object in motion stays in motion so get off your butt and move your body

And if working out at the end of the day is the last thing you want to do then you need to workout at the start of your day.. Do it right so you can give yourself energy, and feel accomplished with showing up for yourself that day

If you’re relying on your mood for whether or not you’re going to workout, then you’re not going to get very far in your health and fitness goals

Alright, the fifth and final myth I’m going to cover in today’s episode is taking a week or two off the gym will lose all your progress

There have actually been countless studies done on this exact topic and they found that you can take 3 weeks off from the gym and not lose any muscle mass.. After those 3 weeks you do start to lose gains

The reason why people believe the myth that you will lose progress when you take time off is because you do lose your pump

So if you’re someone who consistently lifts at least say twice a week, you’re used to having a pump for a majority of your week where when you look in the mirror your muscles look a little more full and defined

When you take time out of the gym, for whatever reason, you do lose that pump and appear more flat.. That flatness plays tricks on your mind and makes you believe you’re losing muscle

But you’re not!

The other positive is muscle has memory

So even if you had to take 4 or more weeks off the gym, yes you will lose muscle mass, but it will come back 1.5x faster than when you first put it on

I will say, the myth of losing progress and the ability to gain back whatever you do lose only applies to true resistance training

Not the resistance bootcamp class bullshit.. Sorry to shit on it, but it’s facts

And certainly not when it comes to cardio

Real resistance training is where you control the rest periods or the rest periods are being controlled, if say you’re working with a trainer

You’ll find yourself losing progress in cardio the second you take a week off 

Cardio is one of those things that’s easy to improve on if you’re consistent with it, but easy to lose the moment you stop

Strength training takes longer to improve on but takes longer to lose progress on

So don’t get the two twisted when it comes to this myth of losing progress when taking time off

And if you do need to take time off, go easy on yourself when you come back to the gym

Because what you don’t want to do is come back, overdo it, be really sore, and then need to take more time off to recover from your too intense of a workout

But those are the five myths

1. You need to be sweating to deem a workout as good or effective
2. You can spot reduce fat and on that topic muscle replaces fat
3. Cardio is the best way to lose weight
4. No pain, no gain
5. Taking a week or two off the gym will lose all your progress

So hopefully now you have a better understanding as to what’s actually going on in the gym, with your body, and your relationship to exercise

Because there is so much misleading information out on the internet and with bad influencers or people who are genetically blessed

Every body is different, everyone’s genetic makeup is different, everyone’s lifestyle is different

So just because something works for someone does not mean it’ll work for you… this is mainly for the people listening who see their dream body on someone else and ask for them to drop their workout regimen

These myths, however, are common fitness misconceptions and I wanted to set the record straight so you can be a bit more realistic with what’s going on with your body, progress, and goals

And of course if you have any questions, if you want to debate me on any of these myths that I debunked, or if you want to work with me as your nutrition coach which comes with workout programming, then check out the show notes and click the let’s chat link so we can talk about possibly working together

Otherwise this does conclude another episode of how to twenty-something, if you liked what you heard, learned something new, or hear a friend believing this myths, then please share this episode

Send it to someone, post it on social media and tag me at coach.jessdiamond when you do

And as always, I can’t wait to be in your headphones again next week with another brand new episode