I’ve always been into exercising and staying fit, and being a college athlete, it’s not that hard to do that, right? Well I’ve found that a lot of people who don’t have the training or don’t know the facts find it difficult to stay fit, lose weight, gain strength and maintain endurance. So here are some tips, facts, and busted up myths to help you do just that.

Water is your new best friend

We’ve all heard that 8 cups of water a day is good for you, so there shouldn’t be any miscommunication here. Drink it while you work out, when you’re eating, when you’re resting and all that jazz. Don’t drink a gallon of water in an hour though, your body literally can’t hold that much and your blood could go hypotonic. That could make you very, very sick. So drink a lot of water, but don’t drink that much.

Fun Fact: 1 pound of fat is equal to 3,500 Calories

So if you pull up a new tab and Google how many calories are in a pound of fat, you’d get 3,500 calories. So that’s 500 calories a day, 7 days a week for you math majors, so you could lose a pound a week if you cut out 500 calories a day. That’s a Chic-fil-a sandwich and some fries, or 2 cans of Coke, or half a pint of ice cream. If you cut that out of your daily diet, theoretically you should be losing weight.

Fiber, Meat, and Carbs

Fiber is pretty good for you. Eat more fruits and vegetables, they help your metabolism and speed the process along but don’t just eat fruits and vegetables. Your body needs protein, fat, and cholesterol for hormone production, higher brain function, muscle repair, and carrying out daily activities: Meat is the answer to all of that. Beef or red meat has the highest average amount of protein per ounce BUT has the highest amount of fat. Pork however, has a higher protein to fat ratio compared to any other meat and this is pork, not ham, there’s a difference. DON’T CUT CARBS OUT. The right carbs are the basic building blocks that give you the energy to do the things you do. As they get more complex, the more they can be broken down, so replace the simple carbohydrates with complex ones like whole grains and whole wheats and you’ll feel more healthy and more energized.

Fun Fact: Aspartame is not bad for you

Recently aspartame, the artificial sweetener, has been catching flak from health critics, but I don’t think there’s any reason for that. The FDA did not find any premise for the European study that showed it caused cancer. It also doesn’t cause weight gain, since aspartame is 200 times sweeter than cane sugar, it can lead to the tendency to eat even sweeter food, so maybe lack of will power causes weight gain. The only way I see that it’s bad for you is that if you’re allergic to phenylalanine, the product of the breakdown of aspartame. So aspartame isn’t bad for you, everything is fine in moderation.

Exercise and Diet

Oh yeah, I’m ending it on a cliché.

If you want to...

Get big, get swole, get yolked:

High Weight, Low Reps, no machines, all free weights.

Get fit, get skinny, and lose weight:

hit the cardio machines. And if you want abs…you better hope it’s in your genetics, defined abs are 10% work, 10% diet, and 80% genes so take a look at mom and dad and if you don’t have abs, blame them.

For diet:

the big 3 (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) or 6 smaller meals throughout the day should do the trick, but do not fast. Fasting slows your metabolism and the next time you eat, your body stores that food away immediately as fat, because you tricked into that primal “I don’t know when my next meal is” mode.