The pursuit for the perfect body is something that everyone is bombarded with now-a-days. There are ads everyplace we look; magazines, social media, TV ads, etc. The constant pursuit of happiness makes it a lucrative business for companies that sell products with empty promises. This multimillion dollar market has only one goal in mind: being more powerful than the next competitor. To do this, they use their marketing dollars to push fake advice, fund researches to their convenience, and advertise everywhere, anything to sell their products and philosophy.
I was lucky enough to find brilliant minds in the industry that have other interests in mind other than make money out of lies. I dug into their blogs, listened to their podcasts, and got a hold of them so that I could educate myself, but more than that, to help other people.
I don’t have a PhD like Layne Norton, nor have I wrote countless blogs and research based books like Mike Mathews, I haven’t coached Gary V like Jordan Syatt, and I don’t have the best fitness podcast like Mindpump; but I have taken a lot of their information to educate myself and help other people step away of the destructive fitness marketing.
With so much conflicting advice out there and plenty of confused people, I decided to tell everyone out there about the 10 biggest lies the fitness industry wants us to believe.
1. Carbs make you fat, specially after dark.
Actually, eating a lot and not moving enough is what makes you fat. There is no such thing as a fattening food, only a food with a lot of calories in it, that pushes you to a caloric surplus.
2. Eating fat will make you fat.
It’s funny when the industry says this, because you need fat to burn fat, especially women.
Avocados, salmon and nuts, have great dietary fats in them.3. These exercises tone your body.
Every fitness “expert” favorite word; toning. There is no difference between building muscle and “toning.” It’s just a word to try to lure women to buy fitness products.
4. Eating frequently helps you lose fat.
It doesn’t. Eating more often will just make you control your appetite. In the end, meal frequency has no effect on how much fat you can burn.
5. Women shouldn’t lift heavy.
Another big lie. Heavy weight lifting will not make a woman bulky!
If anything, it can help build a great athletic body.6. Squats are bad for your knees.
Doing squats the wrong way is. Any exercise done the wrong way will be bad for you somehow.
Squats are a great exercise, and when done properly it can be one of the best movements out there.7. The “12 week program” that will make you shredded.
It doesn’t take 12 weeks, it takes longer and it is a test of discipline. You have to be consistent if you want to see results.
8. Avoid gluten at all costs.
Unless you are gluten sensitive or have celiac disease, there isn’t any underlying factor why you should avoid it. This goes with any other food; the end goal is to have a healthy “relationship” with how much you eat.
9. More cardio/sweating means more fat burned.
Cardio should be used as a tool to help you lose fat, but it isn’t the only way. Too much cardio will actually “burn” muscle too. Also, how much you sweat doesn’t correlate with fat burned; you can lift heavy, not sweat much, but still burn more calories than jumping on the treadmill!
10. “Clean” eating.
You see all these fitness trainers doing “meal preps” with tilapia and broccoli, yet there isn’t an actual definition of what clean eating is. There is no such thing as clean eating, nor will it make you burn fat or help you build muscle.
Now that you are better equipped than a large percentage of the population, it’s up to you to start making a difference. Like I said in one of my previous articles, don’t neglect your health, and please don’t fall into the traps of the multimillion dollar industry; they only want your money!
Anything else that makes you roll your eyes? Let me know.
