Still believe in some popular weight loss myths?
You’re not alone.
Today, I’m gonna show you 10 diet and workout myths that you still believe in that are definitely holding you back from achieving your weight loss goals.
A lot of these weight loss myths are severely outdated information and are often considered conventional wisdom; and people just follow it blindly. But that doesn’t always mean it’s the truth.
If you’re still following these outdated weight loss myths then that’s definitely gonna hinder your weight loss progress.
Because losing weight is hard enough as it is. You don’t wanna make it harder by following bad information. In this video, I’m going to debunk these popular weight loss myths once and for all.
Let’s jump right into probably the most popular diet myth out there.
It’s important that you get this right because it’s gonna set the tone for the rest of your day whether you’re moving towards your weight loss goals or away from it.
Weight loss Myth #1: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day
This has been ingrained in our heads for who knows how long now.
The general idea really is that you need to eat something first thing in the morning to kick start your metabolism from your sleep.
The thing is, your metabolism doesn’t really stop when you sleep. Otherwise, you’d die.
And yes, your metabolism does go up a little bit when you eat. That’s because of something called the thermic effect of food.
It’s the energy required for digestion, absorption, and disposal of ingested nutrients.
The thermic effect of carbs for example is 5 to 15% of the energy consumed, 20 to 35% for protein, and 5 to 15% for fat. Which means that when you eat, you’re still at a net caloric surplus.
If you wanna lose weight, specifically body fat, you need to be at a caloric deficit; assuming that your hormones are fully optimized for fat loss.
You can’t just cut calories. It doesn’t work long term.
And that’s another weight loss myth in itself. My entire channel is all about debunking the calories in vs calories out myth so make sure you check out all my other videos.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with eating breakfast by the way. I love breakfast food. It really depends on the types of breakfast of food you consume.
Because there is a world of difference in how your body responds if you eat bacon and eggs versus a bowl of breakfast cereal with skim milk or toast with some jam.
The former is a nice and nutritious meal full of healthy fats and protein which will help keep you satiated.
While the latter is a nutrient deficient sugar laden meal that’s gonna cause a huge spike in your blood glucose with a corresponding spike in your insulin levels.
Insulin is your storing hormone. Which then puts your body in fat storage mode because high insulin blocks fat burning.
So if your breakfast is composed of the latter, breakfast might be the most important meal of the day for you not to screw up.
Myth #2: Skipping a meal will put your body into starvation mode
This is directly tied to the first weight loss myth in that you need to eat first thing in the morning.
Because skipping a meal, especially the all important breakfast, is somehow gonna put your body in starvation mode.
No. Meat times are completely made up.
We’re the only species on the planet that feels the need to shove cornflakes down our throats first thing in the morning.
I remember force feeding myself to eat first thing in the morning even though I wasn’t hungry.
Kids inherently know this. If kids aren’t hungry, good luck feeding them. They’re gonna be kicking and screaming. They won’t eat. It’s only us that teaches them that we need to eat at certain times.
Let me ask you this. What do you think will happen if you skip a meal? Nothing. You’re probably gonna lose some weight because your body has survival mechanisms that gets triggered when there’s no food available.
Our Paleolithic ancestors didn’t wake up first thing in the morning and said, “We better eat breakfast. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!”
Nonsense. Sometimes they would go days without eating and they were perfectly fine.
Myth #3: Eating six small meals a day to fuel your metabolism
Since we’re in the topic of skipping meals, this is the complete opposite of it. And this was popularized by the body building industry.
The concept being that you need to fuel your metabolism to burn more fat by taking advantage of that thermic effect of food, which again only lands you in a caloric surplus.
But then some people say, “But they’re smaller meals!” Yeah, that doesn’t really help the argument.
The biggest problem with this way of eating is that it’s extremely tedious.
Your entire day basically revolves around eating food and the meals are not satiating at all. You’re always hungry when you eat this way.
To make it more convenient, we start gravitating towards highly processed packaged foods like granola bars or protein bars.
If you wanna keep the calories down, we start eating more highly processed foods like low fat and low calorie versions of foods.
Again, those foods are not satiating at all. And satiety plays a huge role in your weight loss success.
So every time you eat, you trigger the fat storing hormone insulin to store all the nutrients from your meal. It puts your body in fat storage mode.
Now, this is a very important key concept that you need to understand. Your body can only be in two states. You can either be in the fed state or the fasted state.
Insulin is what controls this process. That’s why a lot of people consider insulin the master hormone. It’s the hormone that controls your body weight.
So every time you eat, again, your body goes into fat storage mode.
And if you eat your six small meals a day and you’re eating a lot of these processed foods which are extremely insulinogenic, you’re in fat storage mode all day long.
This by the way explains why you’re not losing weight even though you’re only eating small meals and you’re only eating 1200 calories every day.
Myth #4: Fat makes you fat
This belief started back in 1980 when the USDA released the first dietary guidelines for Americans. Telling everyone to eat a mostly grain based high carb, low fat diet.
The top of the food pyramid is where you can find fat. It’s also when the energy balance theory was born.
Because fat is calorically dense, all you have to do is go on a low fat diet.
In turn, everyone started buying low fat foods. We started buying low fat cheese, skim milk, and egg whites.
But did you know that the yolk is the most nutritious part of the egg? That’s where all the vitamins and nutrients are.
Dietary fat is essential to the human body especially when it comes to activating satiety hormones.
Fat doesn’t make you fat. If anything, if you’re not eating enough fat, you’re probably fat.
Bonus Myth
A bonus myth about fat is that it clogs up your arteries and causes heart attacks. That is completely false.
The aforementioned is actually caused by inflammation from eating a lot of processed sugary foods and toxic vegetable and seed oils.
New studies actually now show that the more saturated fat you eat, the more protected you are from heart disease.
Myth #5: Drinking milk is healthy for you
I mentioned skim milk from the last myth for a reason.
Because it hurts me every time I hear someone order a skinny vanilla latte with however many pumps of sugar free syrup whenever I’m at Starbucks.
And I love using skim milk as an example, because it’s gross.
If you compare skim milk vs regular milk, you’re gonna see that it’s low in calories because it’s lower in fat. But if you look at the sugar content, it’s usually higher.
The other thing about milk is that we are the only species on the planet that drinks milk from another animal. It’s kinda weird if you think about it.
The biggest reason why we still do this is because milk contains calcium. But you can get calcium from better sources like nuts and leafy greens.
Think about it this way. A cow’s milk is full of something called IGF-1 which is designed to grow a 90 lb baby calf to a fully grown 1500 lb cow in about 15 months.
How do you think that’s gonna affect your body?
Myth #6: Red meat is bad for you
It’s not.
Any “study” that claims eating red meat is bad for you is usually just based on something called an epidemiological study. The problem is, it can only prove correlation but not causation.
There’s also usually some sort of plant based propaganda behind it.
Here’s the truth. Claiming that red meat is bad goes against evolution.
Any anthropologist will tell you that the growth of the human brain is directly linked to our ancestors being able to discover fire and create tools to hunt animals.
Many native tribes around the world who still live a hunter gather life are perfect examples of this, like the Masaii tribe from Africa or the the Inuits in Canada. Let’s use the Inuits as an example because I’m from Canada.
Their diets consists of mostly animals because plants aren’t really abundant in the north. They mostly hunt fish, seals, and caribou.
What they do after a successful hunt is they’ll actually eat the fattiest parts and organ meat of the anima first because they’re the most nutrient dense.
Again, fat isn’t bad for you.
And they don’t suffer from modern western diseases like diabetes, obesity, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. They only start getting it when they start eating a “modern” western diet. Go figure.
Myth #7: Spending hours at the gym to burn calories
I’m talking specifically here about people who spends countless hours on their favourite cardio machine trying to burn calories.
I have a separate YouTube video why this concept doesn’t work so make sure you check that out.
But all you need to know is that it’s been widely proven that calories burned at the gym does not translate to fat burned in the body.
You goal when you exercise is to build lean muscle mass because that is the primary driver of your metabolism. And you don’t need to spend hours at the gym in order to achieve that.
If you do a high intensity interval training style workout for example, you can get a lot of work done in just 10-15 minutes. Think less but more intense when it comes to your workouts.
Myth #8: The anabolic window
This is the idea that you only have a small window of time to drink your protein shake, or eat enough Nutella to induce diabetes to fuel your muscles.
It’s purely bro science.
Real studies show that the timing when you eat your protein doesn’t matter. As long as you eat it at some point during the day.
It’s the amount of total protein intake that matters.
Your body is also extremely efficient when it comes to recycling old proteins. Again, this goes back to our evolution.
Our Paleolithic ancestors would sometimes go days without food. If there was such a thing as an anabolic window, they would’ve withered away.
Myth #9: You need to drink a protein shake
I’m killing potential sponsorship deals here but this is purely bro science.
We are extremely over-proteinized as a society. You actually need way less protein than what you’ve been led to believe. You only need 0.7 grams per pound of lean body mass to promote muscle growth.
The other problem about protein shakes is whey and casein, which is what protein powders are made out of, are extremely insulinogenic because they’re highly processed.
Protein powders are also usually sweetened with sugar or artificial sweeteners which are also fattening.
Plus, protein powders are not satiating. What do you think is more filling? A couple of eggs, or a scoop of protein powder?
Don’t drink your protein; eat it.
Myth #10: The myth of detox and juice cleanses
Let’s call a spade a spade. Juice cleanses are nothing more than an expensive high sugar crash diet.
When I was doing my research, I saw a 3-day juice cleanse called “Deep Clean” for $125. The only deep clean that will happen is it will deep clean your wallet.
The only thing that a juice cleanse does is it puts you in a massive calorie deficit. That’s why you lose weight when you do it. While pumping you with sugar which triggers massive cravings.
That’s why a lot of people are miserable when they do it.
When they finish the cleanse, they put all the weight back on. Sound familiar?
Did you know that your body has a natural detox system? It’s called your liver. There you go. I just saved you $125.
Bonus myth: It’s normal for you to gain fat as you get older
I hate this myth because it’s such a defeatist attitude.
If you eat a crappy diet and you don’t exercise, then yes you’re gonna get fat and sick as you get older. Your quality of life will suffer.
The average American for example gains 1.5 lb of fat and losses half a pound of muscle starting at the age of 25 until 55. The average American adult is also in the overweight or obese category.
I would bet a majority of them still follows a lot of the weight loss myths I just mentioned.
But you don’t need to be part of that statistic. You need to be above average.
Time and time again, I see it with all my students, I’ve seen them achieve amazing results because they take care of themselves.
They follow the right diet, not these weight loss myths, and they’re in the best shape of their lives. Some of them are in their 50’s and 60’s.
At the end of the day, it’s really all about putting yourself in the best position possible to succeed.
It starts by knowing the right information and debunking a lot of these popular weight loss myths so you can make better decisions moving forward.
As always, if this was helpful, share it with a friend who could benefit from it as well!
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