This time I present you a topic that has been very trendy lately. This will be a series of posts in which I want to stop some myths, bring some light of truth, and hopefully change the way you think about some of them.
There are many different myths around training and nutrition that people unfortunately still believe and spread false statements. I want to share some of them with you and give you facts and other point of view that hopefully will make you think again about your beliefs. I’m not saying you, dear reader, still believe in all of them but I’m sure that some of them you do, and some will be new for you as well. And that’s good, as I want to share my knowledge with the world, and I hope that everyone can find something of interest for them in my posts.
So, in today’s post I will share with you 4 myths that I think are very common and many people still believe them.
X I don’t eat after 6PM because I will be fat
\/ There is no good or bad time for eating. Total daily calorie and macronutrients intake is what matters.
This belief is still widely known as one of the main, but false, reasons why we gain weight. There will be some cases in people that should not be eating after certain hour or to close to the time going to bed, but for most of healthy population there is no evidence in research that could back it up. So, it is not the time of meals, but what we eat and the amount of food we consume that contributes to weight gain.
X (Women) I don’t lift weights because I don’t want to look like a man.
\/ That would be the case if they had the same amount of testosterone as men.
It is simply not possible, at least for most women, to gain in size like men do due to physiological differences in our bodies. Usually men have more testosterone than women, and as we know this hormone is hugely responsible for muscle growth. Hence for most women it is safe to lift weights without worry of gaining too much muscle or size.
X I take a lot of supplements because I want to be big and strong.
\/ Supplements, as the name suggest should be only used to supplement our lack of vitamins or macronutrients. But still those should be supplied with balanced diet.
In most cases, for general population, there is no need to use or at least spend fortune on supplements. Especially if the diet is balanced. But unfortunately, there is still many different beliefs about supplements and people think of them as a shortcut to the results. If this is you and your approach, you are more likely to forget about huge role of fundaments such as good training plan, balanced diet and good recovery which should be more than enough to give you results you want. Of course, I’m not saying supplements are bad or we should avoid them at all cost, but we definitely need to make sure that principals of good planning are in place.
X This athlete is huge I want to be like him/her so I will follow his/her plan.
\/ Professional athletes train for years to get to that level, they usually have a coach, proper diet and good recovery. (Sometimes use some illegal “supplements” as well).
If that person is a coach and design something just for you then that is ok. But here I’m talking purely about using exact same training methods and diet plans as pro athletes for yourself. Like I said above, most of the pro athletes you see at fitness competition or on social media have sacrificed big part of their lives to get to the place you see them now. Their bodies have adapted to the diet and training programme specifically designed for them so if you go ahead and use that programme or diet it might actually give you more problems than solutions.
This post is quite short but it only starting a whole new series of posts so there will be more to follow.
If you don’t agree with something in this post, have any questions or ideas for another post, please comment or message me!
All the best!
Michal