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Writer's pictureJason Quinn

Myth-Busting Session

Welcome to a Myth-Busting Session. Let’s go over a few myths about training, nutrition, and metabolism, shall we?


We've all heard certain ideas repeated so much that they must be true, right? Maybe, maybe not. Many ideas just sound good and catch on even if they're inaccurate.




 

Five Myths about Training


Light Weights and High Reps get you toned.


There are countless images of lean women doing exercises with tiny neon dumbbells. The message? Doing tons of reps with light dumbbells is the best way to get toned arms like her.


If you like doing sets of 30 triceps kickbacks, have at it. There's nothing wrong with doing higher-rep training if you enjoy it.


But the truth is, if you can do 30 reps in a row, that exercise isn't challenging you. Well, maybe it's challenging your counting skills. When you're doing that many reps, almost all of them are going to be easy. You could be doing a set where 27 reps essentially don't count. Maybe the last few are difficult.


Want your body to change? You're going to have to do some difficult reps.


Instead of doing 30 reps where only the last 3-4 are hard, what if you did 3-10 reps? Choose a weight you can only do 3 reps and you'll definitely be challenging your body to get stronger. With fewer reps, all the reps count.


The magic isn't in the number of reps you do, it's in the ones that count. It doesn't really matter if it's 3 or 10, as long as you're pushing yourself.


Work on getting stronger. A stronger muscle is a more toned muscle.


Train until failure for maximum gains.


I just told you you have to push yourself if you want to transform your body. It's easy to take the leap and assume you must go all out in order to max out your progress.


Should you do each set until you are incapable of doing any more reps? In a word, no. Mainly because training to failure is a good way to end up injured. You try to knock out one final rep and unintentionally your form slips and boom, you get hurt.


Also, training to failure is more likely to make you sore the next day (or few days), which may lead to you skipping the gym to rest.


The point of training hard is to gradually build up your strength over time. It's not to get jacked today. You push yourself close to your limits but not right at them in order to get stronger.


Training at level 10/10 on Monday might seem like a good idea. But if you're wiped out for Wednesday's session, then you're undermining your progress.


A better approach is to shoot for 7/10 or 8/10 in terms of difficulty. You're not coasting in your workouts. And you're not grinding yourself into dust. You'll be able to recover in time for your next session.


Lifting heavy makes you bulky.


So now you know you have to push yourself in order to build strength and muscle. But what if you're happy with your size and don't want to get any bigger? Lifting heavy makes you bulky, doesn't it?


Nope.


Those really big, musclebound men and women you see in the gym are lifting heavy, but that's not why they're big. Some of the reason they're able to add mass to their bodies is genetic. Some of it may also be the result of supplements, including steroids. But the main driver (besides genes) is they eat to support the growth.


Simply, if you don't eat to get bigger, you won't get bigger. If your goal is to maintain your weight, and you eat to that goal, the training will get you stronger and leaner but not bulkier.


The king of all exercises.


You might have heard that the squat is the king of all exercises. Or maybe it's the deadlift. You "must" do them in order to build a strong, appealing body, right?


It's not the case. It's certainly true that squats and deadlifts are great exercises that work the body's largest muscles very effectively.


It's also true that there is no such thing as a "must do" exercise.


You may have a strong dislike of barbell back squats or barbell deadlifts. They may not feel comfortable. Perhaps a prior injury makes them impossible for you. Does that mean you can't get fit or strong? Of course not.


For every muscle, there is more than one exercise to get stronger. There are always work arounds.


No pain, no gain. If you’re not sore, you’re not training hard enough.


Raise your hand if you've experienced the sadness that happens the day after a brutal leg day when you have to walk a flight of stairs.


Some soreness is to be expected when it comes to working out, but it should never be the objective.


You tend to get sore if you're training under certain conditions. You're new to that type of training or you're coming back from a long layoff. You're significantly increasing the amount of volume (reps or sets) you do. Also, if you're doing reps where you go really slow on the eccentric (lowering) part of the lift.


Soreness can last several days. As your body gets used to the demands you're putting on it, you'll get sore less and less. When it does happen, it'll be for a shorter time.


To combat soreness, I recommend light activity such as walking. You increase the flow of blood to the damaged muscles, which brings them oxygen and nutrients necessary for healing.


The objective of training is to stimulate your muscles to grow stronger. You do that by challenging them, not by seeking to obliterate them. If you're really sore after every workout you're pushing too hard.


No pain, no gain isn't a good approach. It's the wrong metric to judge if your workout was successful. Instead, you want to track something useful. Did you lift more weight than your last session? Did you lift the same weight but it felt easier? Were you able to do one rep more than last time? Any of those is a great way to track your progress.

 


Five Myths about Nutrition


Carbs are bad for you.


Carbs get a bad rap. It seems every few years carbs get blamed for the increase in the number of people with obesity.


The truth is carbs are not bad for you. Our bodies have evolved to use carbs as a primary source of energy. We're able to process them easily and quickly. This is a good thing. It means your body can take that pre-workout banana to give you energy for your workout. It means your body can use the post-workout oatmeal as fuel to restore the glycogen (carbs' stored form in your muscle tissue) you depleted during your workout.


Part of the blame is people lump all carbs together. It's true that ultimately, your body breaks down any carbs you eat into sugar. This doesn't make them bad. It's just the way our bodies work. But I think you'll agree that there's a big nutritional difference between eating 500 calories of fruit and 500 calories of birthday cake, right?


I'm not saying fruit is great and birthday cake is bad and you should never have the cake. Nope, not at all.


There's nothing wrong with cake.


Just understand that it has a different nutrient profile than pears, okay?


It's not the type of food you eat that makes you gain body fat, it's the amount.


If you eat more calories than you burn, you'll put on body fat. It doesn't matter if you eat all carbs or zero carbs. It's the amount that dictates weight gain, not the type of food.


Carbs are delicious.


Fat is bad for you.


After a few years of carb bashing, it's then fat's turn to take the blame. It's marketing. Blame carbs for a while then blame dietary fat.


Dietary fat is good for you. It helps your body process fat-soluble vitamins. It aids your body in the production of hormones, including sex hormones. Knowing it does that for you, can you really say it's bad for you?


Dietary fat is calorie-dense, which just means that for a little amount of food per serving, it packs a lot of calories. When it comes to that spoonful of peanut butter, that drizzle of olive oil, or that pat of butter, you can end up eating a lot more calories than you'd think.


That's not to say avoid eating fat. Just that it's useful to bear in mind the portions.


It's not the dietary fats that make you fat, it's eating excessive calories. Don't be afraid of that avocado, just be aware.


Eating late at night.


Have you heard a recommendation that you shouldn't eat after 8:00pm or it'll make you fat?


There is nothing magical about the time of day when it comes to eating. If you had a bowl of rice at 10:00am or 10:00pm, there'd be no difference between the two. It's still the same bowl of rice.


The reason some people have success by having a food cutoff time is simply because it's a simple way to limit their calorie intake. Stopping eating at 8:00 means they're probably eating less food over the course of the whole day.


That's the key, not the clock. If you eat less food each day, in time you'll see the scale start moving down.


However, if you eat 1800 calories per day, it's not as if having them all before primetime tv starts will affect your body differently than if you had a late dinner. The amount of food you eat is the driver of fat loss, not the time you eat.


Supplements are necessary.


The supplement industry makes billions of dollars making promises. Some form of take this pill, powder, or shake and you'll be ripped by summer, right?


Let me say unequivocally, supplements aren't necessary, no matter what your fitness goal is.


You can't eat like a trash can, do half-hearted workouts, and then make up for it protein powder or creatine.


Supplements, as their name implies, are supplemental. They're a bonus. You will get the vast majority of your results from eating nutritious meals, mostly whole foods combined with training hard and prioritizing your sleep.


Counting calories is a must.


What gets measured gets managed, right? Is it possible to hit your fitness goals and not count every single calorie you eat? Of course.


Counting calories is one strategy to track what you're eating. I recommend it, I think it works very well for a lot of people. But it's not necessary.


Ultimately, counting calories is a temporary strategy. It's a great way to teach you portion sizes and being mindful about what you consume.


The simplest way is to use an app to enter your foods. Yes, there's a small learning curve to it. But after a couple weeks, you'll find that it doesn't take more than a few seconds.


After a while you'll be able to accurately estimate calorie counts just by eyeballing the foods you've been entering into the app. This may take a while and that's okay. This is a skill and it takes time to develop skills.


Calorie-counting is just an effective way to program you to be aware of how much you're eating. It's not meant to be a lifelong strategy. If you enjoy doing it and it works for you, of course you can do it for life if you really want to. But the goal is developing awareness.

 


Five Myths about Metabolism


Your metabolism is broken


First, let's pin down a precise definition for metabolism. It's the sum of all the chemical processes your body does in order to keep you alive. That includes digesting food to break it down into parts it can use to build, repair, and replace cells. If this process is off, that's bad news.


The chances are very good your metabolism isn't broken or damaged. There are people who absolutely have medical issues with their metabolism. If you think that describes you, I implore you to get checked out by the doctor. If that's the case, they can prescribe a treatment to help you.


The fact is, that's not the case for most of us.


It's an easy scapegoat.

Does this sound familiar? You decide to lose weight. You drop your calories. You lose weight at first. Maybe things go well for a while. But then you hit a point where your progress stalls. In frustration or despair, you give up and in a few short months you're back heavier than you started?


It's absolutely reasonable to be frustrated about it. But the problem isn't your metabolism, it's your fat loss approach. You may not see an upside, but it's a good thing your metabolism is healthy. It means you don't need a medical intervention to help you.


Eating less is always the answer when it comes to fat loss.


If you're not losing weight, it must mean you're eating too much, right?


Generally speaking, but not always. There's a minimum amount of food your body needs in order to keep you alive and functioning. If you eat below this amount for an extended period of time, you are literally starving yourself. Your body will prioritize keeping you alive, not making you look great.


There's really no point in losing the fat if it comes at the cost of your health.


Eating the bare minimum is not the best strategy for long term success. You want to drop the fat and be healthy. The way to do that is not through eating as little as you can get away with.


It's actually the opposite. You want to eat as much as you can while still being in a calorie deficit. It seems a bit counterintuitive at first.


You're still in a calorie deficit, which means you're burning more energy than you're eating. Check. You're eating as much as you can while still meeting that criterion. You'll feel less hungry, less unhappy. That means you'll be able to stick with the deficit longer. That means you'll be able to keep losing fat longer.


Getting older is the reason your metabolism isn’t as fast.


A slower metabolism is an inevitable part of aging.


You might remember being a teenager, or even into your twenties, when you could seemingly eat anything and the scale would remain the same. Pizza, burgers, beer? Yes, please. Your "magical" metabolism of youth will burn it all off.


And now it feels like you pack on 5 lbs. just by looking at food? Your metabolism is slower now, but that's just because you're old, right?


Not really. The more active you are, the higher your metabolism. It makes sense. If you do more stuff, your body has to use energy to make that happen.


When you were younger you were much more likely to be active. Now you probably sit at a desk for hours at a time. When you get home, maybe you do some cooking and housework. But chances are, you do a lot more sitting at home, too.


It's the inactivity, not the age. It's true your metabolism does gradually slow decade by decade, but not to the rate that it would impede fat loss. Being more active keeps your metabolism higher.


You need cardio to boost your metabolism.


Is cardio is the best way to increase your metabolism? Doing cardio, of course, burns calories while you're doing it. But you want to increase your metabolic rate over the course of the day. A faster overall metabolism will allow your body to burn more calories all day long.


A simple way is strength training. If you get stronger and build muscle, you will increase your metabolism. The best part is the higher rate isn't just when you're working out. Muscle is more metabolically demanding tissue than body fat. In other words, it takes more calories for your body to maintain muscle than to maintain fat.


More muscle means a faster metabolism. Now it's not like you put on 5 lbs. of muscle and all of a sudden you get to eat an extra 5000 calories without worry. If only that were true, right? It's just another bonus of building some muscle, it'll help burn some more calories just by existing. It does more than make you look good.


Eating frequent meals keeps your metabolism stoked.


Perhaps you've heard that your metabolism is like a coal furnace or a campfire, you must constantly eat in order to keep the fire burning? That eating several small meals during the day is better for keeping your metabolism higher?


This idea comes from the fact that it costs your body some energy in order to break down the food you eat in order to get more energy. You can think of it as kind of a cost of doing business.


The thinking is that if you eat several meals, then your body will have to keep using calories to access the calories in the food you just ate.


It's true that eating spikes your metabolism to digest the food. It's also true that the spike is proportional to the amount of food you eat.


Put another way, whether you put in a small amount of wood on the fire several times a day (by eating small, frequent meals) or if you put a few big stacks of wood on the fire (by eating fewer yet larger meals), the fire still burns the same.


The good news is that it means you don't have to worry about eating at a frequency that you dislike or doesn't fit your schedule. You can eat bigger meals less often and your metabolism will be fine. You can eat small meals several times a day and your metabolism will be fine.


It's really up to you.


Hopefully this helps clear up a bunch of the misinformation out there. If you there's an idea that you're wondering is true or myth, drop it in the comments or hit me up @Jason.Quinn.21.


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