4 Weight Loss Myths to Ditch for the New Year
Weight loss remains the most popular New Year’s Resolution. The best hack is to stop looking for “hacks,” and the second best time-saver is to waste less time on myths, especially weight loss myths.
Myth #1: Carbs make you fat.
Facts: Excess calories cause weight gain. Dietary fat is more fattening than carbs or protein. Meaning that (without getting too deep into biochemistry) dietary fat arrives as fat, making it easy to store this fat as body fat because fats have the same basic molecular structure. However, carbs and protein have a very different molecular structure than fat, so your body has to do much work to convert either into fat for storage as body fat. Protein is nearly impossible to store as fat, and your body can only make 10 grams (weight of 7-8 almonds) of fat from carbs per day at a maximum.
Myth #2: Dieting causes “metabolic damage.”
Facts: Dieting (eating fewer calories in order to lose weight) causes metabolic health. Losing 10% of one’s bodyweight corrects (or greatly improves) high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, fatty liver, and more. People’s metabolic rates go down with weight loss for 2 reasons: (1) they lose muscle and bone if they don’t strength train, and (2) they weigh less so life costs fewer calories.
Myth #3: You should never eat less than 1,400 calories.
Facts: Humans have a wide variety of sizes and activity levels, so appropriate intakes vary as well. There’s no magical number that you need to eat above. A shorter woman with a desk job and a long commute will struggle to lose weight at 1,400 calories; and a large male athlete might struggle to keep weight on at 6,000 calories.
What’s important is: (1) eating at a level for you to be at a healthy weight for you, (2) that you get enough protein and strength training to keep your metabolic rate as high yours can be.
Myth #4: Weight loss is all diet.
Facts: Weight loss = calories in – calories out. Both matter. The more sedentary we get (average daily step counts are down 2/3rds since 2000) the more important exercise and movement become. A high step count and lots of exercise make weight loss (or maintenance) much easier because they give you energy, control appetite and give you margin.
New to our page? We are True 180 Personal Training. We opened our doors in 2016 and have been helping local Ballantyne women ever since. We focus on full body strength training to keep you moving, feeling, and looking your best. We know it can be hard to stop scrolling Instagram and to let go of the weight loss myths you’ve seen hundreds of times. We know it’s hard and we are here to help.
If you’d like to hear what some of our clients have to say please check out this video of Denise.