Fitness myths are prevalent because–let’s face it–They’re easy to believe. The answers to some fitness questions can’t seem to escape controversy or debate.
Fitness research is filled with nuance, because the answers often depend on various factors and because everyone’s minds and bodies are different and unique. Once you find the answers that work for you, inside of science, then it becomes simple.
A rule of thumb: Extremes are a red flag. A trend that tells you to always or never do something should give you pause. It can be hard to figure out what common fitness claims are myths, so let’s disassemble some of them.
Myth #1: If you gain weight, you must be getting fat.
You’ve resolved to eat healthy and work out consistently, and you’ve stuck to it for a good length of time. After losing some initial weight (including water weight), nothing’s going on. The scale won’t move. Then, it finally does—in the wrong direction—eek! That’s enough to make you quit the whole thing.
But wait a sec: That’s completely normal when you’re working to improve your body composition. If you’re trying to burn fat and add muscle, the muscle weight you add may temporarily be more than the fat you’re burning. No change in the scale may mean you’re able to fit into your clothes better. You may look tighter and more sculpted. And you probably feel better. Don’t count on the scale to be your bestie during the process.
Don’t measure your success by your weight loss. Because muscle is more dense than fat, the scale could deceive you into believing you’re going backward, when in actuality, you’re getting stronger and appearing more toned and slim. How do your clothes fit? What is your waist circumference? Are you making fitness gains? Weight should only fit as one piece of your overall weight-loss puzzle.
Myth #2: Being slim means you’re healthy.
If someone looks slim on the outside, is it a given that she’s healthy on the inside? Most definitely not.
In other words, someone who’s larger but active can be healthier and live longer than someone who is slimmer but doesn’t exercise. Adults who are considered a medically normal weight and BMI, but carry a high percentage of body fat and low muscle mass, have what doctors call sarcopenic obesity. They’re often no less at risk for cardiovascular diseases than those who are considered obese. One 2012 study found that one in four normal-weight U.S. adults had pre-diabetes or are metabolically obese.
Just because someone is genetically dispositioned to be slim doesn’t mean she’s exempt from eating whole foods like veggies, limiting processed sugary foods and being active. A skinny person may have a high amount of visceral fat, or belly fat, stored around their organs. This “bad” type of fat is genetically different and deadlier than subcutaneous fat and is linked to heart disease and cancer. People who have a high amount of muscle mass can have a lower risk for metabolic diseases, no matter what their weight.
Studies suggest that weight alone cannot determine someone’s level of fitness and that’s why diet alone won’t make you fit. You need exercise to maintain good muscle mass, and thus good metabolic health. Don’t follow a super-restrictive diet, lose weight, and think as a couch potato that you’re going to be healthy. The science tells us that fitness is not skin deep.
This doesn’t mean that obesity isn’t a risk factor; It certainly is. Obese individuals are more likely to develop metabolic disease or illness, however physical fitness level must be taken into consideration alongside this.
Myth #3: You have to feel pain to achieve the results you want.
Discomfort, yes. A challenge, yes. Pain, no. Severe or chronic fatigue, no.
Exercise should be both enjoyable and uncomfortable. It’s fickle like that. It needs to be enjoyable enough that you keep coming back for more, but it also needs to get you working hard enough to actually be called a workout. We need to experience progressive overload to gain fitness.
Some people constantly love pushing themselves to the limit. Others thrive on the slow-burn type of feeling you’d get with a nice long walk, yoga session or morning swim. Do whatever you gravitate toward, and try to reach that “uncomfortable” threshold for a good length of time. But also learn to recognize the difference between that and pain—Which is your body’s protective mechanism. “No pain, no gain” isn’t a helpful slogan. Pain doesn’t care to be ignored, and if it is, it will most likely respond with long-term problems like chronic injury.
Repetitive trauma to muscle fibers and tendons caused by overdoing exercise with bad form can lead to things like tendonitis, bursitis and stress fractures. Don’t try to push past joint pain or extreme fatigue. Listen to your body. Respect what it’s telling you. Even if the girl next to you in your HIIT class is a fitness queen. Who cares. You’re working out for you, not her or anyone else.
A well-rounded workout schedule features variety. Include both lower and higher impact workouts that keep you motivated. If you find that a workout becomes too easy, gradually increase either the intensity, frequency or duration. And keep tabs on how difficult your workouts feel, on a scale of one to ten.
Myth #4: The more you sweat, the more fat/calories you’re burning.
So you’ve had an intense sweat session on the treadmill, and you wear your soaking tank top like a badge of honor around the gym because you must’ve just melted a ton of weight off. While you may have worked super-duper hard, how sticky you are afterwards has little to do with it. Do you lose weight when you sweat? Yes, but it’s water—not fat. As soon as you rehydrate your weight bounces back up. If you’ve lost weight directly after a workout it’s because you’re dehydrated and need to replenish fluids. Similarly, excessive weight loss at the beginning of a new diet results from water loss, not fat loss.
Your body releases water and electrolytes through the millions of sweat glands on your skin to keep you cool as you heat up through exercise. Everyone sweats differently, and the amount depends on a number of internal and external factors like genetics, type of exercise, fitness level (You sweat earlier and MORE if you’re fit.), weather conditions, age and gender. Regardless of the reason, no matter how much you sweat: Always drink water during and/or after every workout to avoid dehydration.
Myth #5: You can build “long, lean muscle” by doing certain exercises so you won’t bulk up.
This doozy is a marketing ploy repeated even by some fitness instructors and the like, targeted toward women who shy away from strength training, Pamela Geisel, M.S., C.S.C.S., C.P.T. an exercise physiologist at the Hospital for Special Surgery’s Tisch Sports Performance Center, told SELF magazine in 2017.
Bulky muscle vs. lean muscle isn’t a thing. Muscle is muscle, and all of it’s lean. No fitness class or type of training can change the length or lean-ness of your muscles. If you want to look lean, improve your body composition by having more muscle vs. fat on your frame. Do this through a mixture of cardio, strength training and a healthy, calorie-appropriate diet. Stretching doesn’t lengthen your muscles either. Stretching increases the length your muscles can stretch, but not the muscles themselves.
Resources:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22871870/
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M14-2525?articleid=2468805&
https://spo.escardio.org/error.htm?aspxerrorpath=/Abstract.aspx
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