Experts ‘Weigh In’ On Popular Diet and Exercise Myths (@medicalnewstoday)
This article is an intresting quick read about some popular exercise and diet myths. Two that really drove my eyebrows up were:
Stretching before exercise is crucial.
False. Some studies have suggested that stretching actually increases muscles’ susceptibility to injury. They claim that by stretching, our muscle fibers are lengthened and destabilized, making them less prepared for the strain placed upon them by exercise. “You might want to warm-up and stretch before a run, but if you are lifting weights wait until after the workout to stretch the muscles,” adds Tyne.
Crunches will get rid of your belly fat.
False. “You can’t pick and choose areas where you’d like to burn fat”, says Tyne. “In order to burn fat, you should create a workout that includes both cardiovascular and strength training elements. This will decrease your overall body fat content”.
And this one about eating at night I found to be accurate myself after joining the Optifast program:
Eating late at night will make you gain weight.
False. “There are no ‘magic’ hours,” says Bender. “We associate late night eating with weight gain because we usually consume more calories at night. We do this because we usually deprive our bodies of adequate calories the first half of the day. Start the day out with breakfast and eat every 3-4 hours. Keep lunch the same size as dinner, and you will be less likely to over-indulge at night, yet you can enjoy a small late night snack without the fear of it sticking to your middle,” explains Bender.
After hearing somewhere that my body would store unused calories over night, I set an arbitrary cut-off time of around 7:00 pm for my last meal. However, I forgot that my body burns calories while I sleep, and would wake up ravenous – the first thing on my mind was always food, making me ravenous in the morning and setting me up for an entire day of trying to get satiety. I agree with the explanation that we usually consume more calories at night, but I think it’s for another reason – we tend to eat less healthy items and bigger portions for our dinner meals. We may take our lunches to work if we’re good, but we treat ourselves with dinners out. Restaurants have smaller “lunch portions” and larger “dinner portions” on their menus. Psychologically, I think we are wired subconsciously to eat more for dinner.
As an aside, I found this forum thread on “weight loss lies we tell ourselves” humorous.
