Beach Body Myths Sold to Women
For many women the idea of wearing a bathing suit at the beach, or – especially! – the pool in Charlotte is more anxiety than fun. Save yourself the frustration of working hard at things that don’t work by checking out these beach body myths and facts:
1. Myth: Salads = skinny. Order salads when you’re out and you’ll lose weight.
Fact: calorie deficits = weight-loss. Salads are often one of the highest calorie menu items, but they get a pass because of the “salad” halo.
Examples: Panera’s Fuji Apple Salad with Chicken has 570 calories; and a Big Mac has 563. Or, step up to the California Pizza Kitchen’s BBQ Chicken Chopped Salad (with grilled not fried chicken) with 1,133 calories; whereas a Big Mac and large fry is only 1,073 calories.
Bottom line: Use the nutrition information available online to help you pick foods that you enjoy in quantities that will help you lose weight. Grilled (ask for them to go easy on the oil) lean protein (shrimp and chicken are more common options) + fruit salad is usually a filling and reasonable tasty option.
You certainly can make a salad, or other meal weight-loss friendly, but you’re going to have to take control. Avoid the common salad calorie bombs – nuts, cheese, dressing (get it on the side and ask if they have a lower calorie option), and dried fruit are the usual suspects in smuggling 1,000 extra calories into your meal.
2. Myth: Fruit makes you fat because the “high” levels of fructose cause insulin resistance, etc.
Fact: eating fruit helps most people lose weight because it’s low in calories and very filling because the high fiber + water content take up a lot of room in your stomach. Furthermore fruit is good, but it is not hyper-palatable, which is research speak for “food that you want to keep eating and eating and eating.” There a lot of positive in food that is OK vs amazing.
Having fat cells that are constantly over filled (from high calorie and especially high fat intakes) drives the inflammation and insulin resistance that people on Facebook blame on fructose alone. Additionally, Americans get the vast majority their fructose from soda, juice, candy, etc. not fresh fruit.
Bottom line: Fruit is a convenient low calorie-density food, and helps people feel full for long periods of time. However, fruit juice and dried fruit are the opposite of fresh fruit because they pack tons of calories into small spaces just like candy and soda.
3. Myth: Weight loss is all nutrition. In other words, exercise doesn’t help people lose weight.
Fact: Weight loss is calories in vs calories out. The more you move the more you can eat and still lose weight. Can you burn an unlimited number of calories and thereby lose weight eating a diet of delivery pizza and fast food fries? Do you really need me to tell you the answer is “no”?
I would argue that exercise and overall step count are more important for women than they are for men because men are larger, with much more muscles mass… in other words men burn far more calories without exercising than women do. This is why husbands frustrate their wives by losing much more weight with the same nutrition changes.
Bottom line beach body myths #3: weight loss and maintenance are best accomplished if you use both hands – diet and exercise. Get consistent strength training and a high step count (with some of those in a vest for extra credit).
4. Myth: Only work the body parts you want to tone.
Fact: “toning” exercises are the “icing,” but not the cake. You can find both extremes online these days – half the people (the “functional training” political party) will say “isolation exercises are evil,” and the other half will say “all you need is isolation work.” The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle: do as many “compound” exercises and “isolation” exercises are you can make time for.
Compound exercises like squats and push ups are great because they’re time efficient (work many muscles at once) and are very intense. However, most women’s ability to do push ups is limited by their triceps (back of arm muscles), so doing extra tricep work is a great way to get better at doing push ups after you’re too tired to do more push ups. Furthermore, there are 3 tricep muscles and doing an overhead tricep exercise will “fill in the gaps” for their development and tone that push ups will not accomplish. Lastly, doing extra tricep work is a great way to protect your elbows and to make your arms look even better in a tank top.
Bottom line on our #4 beach body myths: What’s true in politics is true in exercise – we are all better together than we are divided. We steps and strength training. We need fiber and protein.
5. Myth: Quinoa helps you lose weight because it’s a “super food.”
Fact: “Super food” is a marketing term with no scientific meaning. Quinoa is actually a high-calorie starch. A cup of plain old white potatoes has 120 calories, whereas a cup of quinoa has 222 calories. Since the only thing that leads to weight loss is a calorie deficit, and feeling full matters, quinoa may not be a great choice for weight loss.
If you are curious about a trendy food you can certainly try substituting for something you currently eat. There will always be more things we want to eat than we should eat.
Bottom line on this Beach Body Myths:
Adding super foods to your diet may just add extra calories. Just because a food is currently trending doesn’t mean you have to eat it. If you want to lose weight focus on creating a sustainable calorie deficit eating foods that you enjoy (and, of course, use common sense and eat plenty of fruits and vegetables).
Coach Josef Brandenburg — ACE | NASM | Precision Nutrition | Training Peri and Menopausal Women | Pain-Free Performance Specialist Certification | Functional Kettlebell Training | 28 years coaching | Specializes in strength training for women over 40.
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