The Truth about Weight Loss

MYTH-YOU CAN TURN FAT INTO MUSCLE

Fat and muscle are two completely different types of tissue, so it’s impossible to turn one into the other. Muscle is active tissue that burns calories, while fat tissue stores excess energy. When you train, it is possible to burn fat and build muscle at the same time, giving the appearance that one has turned into the other, but this is not the case.

MYTH-CARDIO TRAINING IS BEST FOR FAT LOSS

High intensity cardio, such as sprints or hill runs or other versions of HIIT (high intensity interval training) on cardio machines in the gym, is great for fat loss. However, long steady cardio such as jogging is not good for fat burning. In fact, long sessions of such cardio increase the levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which actually causes you to store more body fat. Resistance training is the most effective way of burning body fat since it increases lean tissue, which boosts your metabolic rate, which means you’re burning more fat for energy. Also, done in the correct way, resistance training will give you all of the benefits of cardio, and more. And with much shorter training sessions. Therefore, resistance training should form the core of your programme. This goes for ladies too; none of my female clients have ever complained that they are gaining too much muscle!

MYTH-SIT-UPS WILL BURN BELLY FAT

There is no such thing as ‘spot reduction’. You can’t lose weight / fat from a specific part of your body. So if you feel that your waist is your problem area, doing all the abdominal exercises in the world will do nothing to shift your excess body fat from that area. What it will do is firm up the muscle tissue in that area, which is a good thing, but you will still have a layer of fat covering that muscle. Fat is burned metabolically, from everywhere in your body at the same time. So, it’s your overall routine (plus your nutrition) training your entire body and boosting your metabolic rate that gets rid of this excess body fat.

MYTH-THE SCALES ARE ALL THAT MATTER

Real life tests, such as how you feel, how your clothes fit you & how you look in the mirror are much better than the weighing scales. Don’t obsess about the scales, or how much weight you have or haven’t lost. For starters, your weight can fluctuate a few pounds throughout the day. So weigh yourself once a week at the most and do so at the same time each day and using the same scales. Also, if your doing resistance training (which you should!) you will be getting stronger and building muscle. So, if for example, you lose 3 lbs of body fat and gain 3 lbs of muscle, the scales will tell you that you have made no progress. Your shape and how your clothes fit you may have improved dramatically though. So in any weight loss programme, it is ideal that you are tracking your body fat levels as well as watching the scales. Or at least measure your waistline as you go.