What are some of the BIGGEST LIES in the fitness and health industry? I’ll start with a couple to get the ball rollin’, and please feel free to add whatever you see fit!
- Any form of ‘cardio’ or ‘exercise’ marketed or aimed to burn fat. The miniscule effect is not worth the time spent. Enjoy your family and friends instead! You burn body fat by fasting and following a sensible diet. Exercise should be utilized to maintain athletic ability and muscle mass.
- Eating throughout the day, eating every third hour, eating five, six or more meals a day… This ‘eating all the time disorder’ is not only an unhealthy behavior, it’s extremely counterproductive as well. Not only does it stress the hell out of our digestive system, not allowing it to rest, repair and heal, it also stimulates insulin production – limiting our fat burning abilities and causing health problems down the line. If you have an athletic build or less, you don’t need to eat for more than a 3-hour window a day. If you’re very muscular, 4 to 6 hours will suffice. The only exception are pro-bodybuilders on steroids, but their protein synthesis is in overdrive and normal rules do not apply. But unless you shoot a couple CC of testosterone a day, shorten your eating window and reap all the health benefits!
- The dogma of calories, as in energy in vs. energy out, in weight loss. In reality, it does not matter that much and does not govern fat loss! There are no calorie receptors in the body. Your body does not measure how many calories it gets. It has no idea. Calories are a concept of physics, not a concept of physiology. If you place 100 calories of sugar in your mouth, the physiological response is totally different from if you were to place 100 calories from butter in your mouth.
If you swallow that sugar, you get an insulin response. If you swallow the butter, you get no insulin response at all. The body responds to hormones and that is how it knows what to do when you have consumed something.
If you consume carbohydrates, insulin will go up. If you consume protein, insulin will go up, and so will your protein synthesis by the activation of mTOR and some other signaling pathways.
In other words, there are different receptors for amino acids, for fat, and for hormones released by what we eat or do.
- Body Part Splits, as in training one muscle group a week. This idiocy, just as frequent meals, derives from pro-bodybuilders and heavy steroid users. With steroids, your protein synthesis is constantly elevated – allowing you to get away with stupid shit like this. You can “annihilate” a muscle and then let it grow and recover for almost a week before hitting it again.
However, for anyone else, your muscles are recovered within 24 to 48 hours and ready to go again. And if you were to “annihilate” them, you would end up like an overtrained inflamed mess. In other words, when training naturally (or even on the juice if you’re smart), frequency and low volume is king.
For strength and overall growth, daily full body training is superior. No grinding, no failure, 5-7 exercises, 3-4 set each.
If you have a solid foundation and want to focus on muscle growth and perhaps specialization training, half body or even a 3-split (each muscle twice a week) will work extremely well. Or a mix of them. Just think, “frequency and recovery”. That’s the key!
A lot of Personal Trainers and Coaches are locked into the same rut. They invested in a lot of information, where the majority of it turned out to be false. They, as many others, have an emotional bond to this information and the way they used to do things. It’s painful to admit that they have been wrong or inefficient in their methods. So, they simply ignore it or even bash it. Me? I never had any emotional ties to any kind of information or way to do things. I’m a truther by heart. I seek the most efficient and healthiest way to do things. I try it myself. I try it with tons of clients and I then present and write about it. I still use some of my older knowledge and experience. But whenever I find better ways, I adapt and move on. If you too, can keep an open mind, do your own research and admit that there are better ways to do what you’re currently doing – then you’re way ahead of the pack!