Four Common Weight Loss-Myths That Could Be Hurting Your Progress and Fitness Level

Being in a personal training studio every day, I am witness to a wide variety of commonly held beliefs a lot of people consider factual when it comes to losing
weight. I see a lot of people cripple their success and stall forward progress due to a lot of misinformation. I am hoping that the information below can clear up a lot of misconceptions and help people lose weight and accomplish their weight loss goals.

Myth #1: Eating late leads to weight gain.
Truth: A lot of people that think eating in the late evening and/or close to bed time will cause you to gainweight. This is simply not true and there are many studies that support this conclusion. What is true is that people tend to under-eat
during the day or even skip meals all together. Doing this not only makes them hungry, but also slows their metabolism. These two factors coupled with the fact that your body is fatigued from being awake all day is what sets the stage for weight gain. When you're hungry, running on a slow metabolism, and your body is feeling fatigued most people tend to over-eat and this is what causes late-night or bedtime weight gain. Eating high protein foods, avoiding sugars and fats and drinking plenty of water can actually excel weight loss at night, not add weight gain as many people believe. 

Myth #2 : Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
Truth: Breakfast is very important. It can jump start metabolism and gives the body energy and nutrients that it's be missing for about 6-8 hours. However, to lose weight, lunch is the most important meal of the day. The reason being is that it generally regulates how you will eat the rest of the day. In today's busy world, so many people skimpon lunch or because of social pressures eat low calorie salads or equivalents. Then later in the day when they are hungry and lacking energy, they eat foods high in carbohydrates and calories to make up for it. This results in weight gain. What's worse people think that they are making a "good eating" decision by eatin "just a small salad" for lunch, when in fact they are hurting themselves over the course of the day. It's extremely important to make sure that you eat a good well-rounded lunch in order to maximize your weight loss efforts.

Myth #3: Cardio is the best way to shed pounds.
Truth: Weight training is the best way to lose weight. Cardio is a great way to get your heart and lungs in shape and it does help burn calories. However, if you want your body to change, You must lift weights! Weight training causes deep tissue muscle fatigue. By having to go deep into your muscles tissue for energy reserves to perform an exercise, it breaks down the muscle much more than cardio based exercises does. It's the repair of these deep tissue muscles
that actually causes weight loss. It takes a lot of calories to fully repair these muscles. Much of this repair happens when you are at rest. The combination of weight training, followed by cardio is what will produce best results for maximum
weight loss.

Myth #4: Weight training makes you bulky.
Truth:  Weight training makes you lean, hormones make you bulky. If you work in the fitness and training industry, one thing you hear a lot is "I don't want to weight train too much, because I don't want big bulky muscles." Weight training causes lean muscle development. Male hormones and hormone supplements make you bulky. Men have testosterone which can lead to large muscle growth. But, even in men, unless you have an outside supplementation of extra testosterone or you train you're not going to get extraordinarily large muscles.  Women become very lean when they train with weights. The more lean muscle you build, the smaller, yet more fit you will look. If you're trying to look smaller, building muscle is actually what you would ideally like to do. Not only will you look smaller, but much more fit.

Hope this helps dispel some common weight-loss myths and that you benefit from the truth and achieve your fitness goals.