10 Exercise & Nutrition Myths That Separate You From The Rest
by Jean-Luc Boissonneault
1. No pain no gain
People generally use pain from a workout as a guide to whether their workout was good or not, now is it a good measure of your progress? No, pain comes whenever a different stress is put on your body. You could have been painting on the weekend and your shoulders are sore. Is that a good workout too? What is important is that the weight you are lifting progressively increases. There is one time that it is good to experience pain and that's during the exercise itself.
2. Walking is good enough
The other day I read in the paper "Try walking from one end of the room to the other it could change your life". How low are we going to go? Soon we will be saying ""twirl your thumbs and lose 50 calories."" The point is walking does have some well being benefits but with all the motorized things nowadays you should at least take an hour and exercise with resistance training.
3. Women and bulky muscles
Due to the fact that women do not and cannot naturally produce as much testosterone (one of the main hormones responsible for increasing muscle size) as males do, it is impossible for a woman to gain huge amounts of muscle mass. Unfortunately, the image that may come to your mind is that of professional female bodybuilders. But trust me, no matter how hard a woman trains, she will just naturally look more athletic and not bulky.
4. Fruit juices are good for you
All fruit juices are bad no matter what they say on the box about ""Your daily vitamins and minerals""
5. Muscle turns to fat
Muscle and fat are two completely different structures and one does not turn into the other. The real message here is muscle will help to lower body fat. The more muscle you carry the more fat you will naturally burn.
6. Cutting out meals helps you lose weight
This can work at first, then your metabolism will slow down and then you are back to where you were except now you are starving. Instead eat the right food do not starve yourself.
7. Too young to lift weights
Jumping off a 4' step will cause more impact on a youger child's body than him squatting double his weight, so don't worry about your child being too young. Just make sure they are with a qualified trainer and it will do nothing but good things for them presently and in the future.
8. Whole wheat bread is better than white bread
This is the difference on the glycemic index of white bread and whole wheat (the lower the number the better and the less insulin it will produce);
white bread - 69 points
whole wheat - 64 points
If you absolutely want bread, here are the 3 best;
Coarse barley kernel bread with 75% kernels scores a 27 points
Bürgen® Oat Bran & Honey bread with barley scores a 34 points
Bürgen® Soy-Lin bread, kibbled soy (8%) and linseed (8%) loaf scores a 36 points
9. You can't be fat and fit
I was watching a fighting sport on tv and everybody that was around me assumed the guy that had more body fat would be out of shape for the fight... that wasn't the case. Only because your holding more body fat does not mean you are not in good physical shape. It is usually a matter of bad nutrition from the past. I had an athlete that you might of thought was out of shape being 6'3 & 295 pounds but I have yet to see anybody train as hard as he did. It didn’t matter what he had to do, I'd say ""run there, lift that, jump to there, pick that up"" and he did it faster than I could imagine anyone doing and that is also why he is now competing at the international level.
10. You can be too old to train
Repeat after me “You are never too old to exercise.” Actually, as you get older your hormone levels decline which makes everything else decline. Keep strong and you will see this helps to bring those hormone levels back up.
