losing weight can be pretty straightforward but as soon as you start to search for the best ways to lose weight there's no doubt that you'll run into some myths and bad advice that'll make losing weight harder than it has to be and it might even throw off your progress so today i'm going to run through the most common myths and lies that many of you still believe about burning fat and dropping pounds off the scale and the first myth is the idea that eating small but frequent meals will boost your metabolism this is a very
common widespread belief so it's okay if you've been under the impression that this is true there are still even many doctors pushing this false information but the research shows a different story in fact a large meta-analysis found that regardless of whether you're eating all your daily calories at once or instead you're splitting them up and nibbling throughout the day as long as those calories are matched there should be no difference in your metabolic rate so focus more on setting up your diet in a way that you can be consistent with rather than worrying so much
about your meal frequency you don't need to eat five to six meals a day to get lean and look great next we have the false belief that eating late at night will make you fatter than eating earlier on in the day this has been proven to be completely untrue many studies have shown that simply eating later on at night doesn't make you fat in one of these studies researchers found that eating carbs at night didn't impair fat loss even after six months of doing so in fact it might surprise you to learn that researchers observed
more favorable weight loss and hormonal changes in the group that ate most of their carbs for dinner so it's totally okay to eat food later on at night just don't make the mistake of staying up too late at night and mindlessly eating junk food instead of getting to sleep another myth that has become a lot more popular lately is this idea that dietary fat won't make you fat for a long time people believe that fat was the main macronutrient that led to weight gain so as a society we went on this low fat craze where
a ton of processed foods had the fats replaced with sugar and it turned out people got even fatter so nowadays for many the pendulum has swung in the other direction so instead of being fearful of fats there's now this belief that since dietary fat can't raise your insulin levels it's unlikely that you'll gain body fat by eating more of that dietary fat however the truth is that your body can still store calories very well even without the presence of insulin now even though it can be very beneficial to straighten out your hormones and manage your
insulin levels with a proper diet it doesn't change the fact that a calorie from dietary fat can be just as fattening as a calorie coming from carbohydrates next we have myth number four dieting and especially fasting will cause permanent metabolic damage by putting you into a starvation mode according to a review study by menohenzelmans starvation modes and metabolic damage don't exist if you don't know about him meno hendelmans is a physique competitor and a very reliable scientific author in the realm of sports science in his study him and other researchers confirmed that the theory of
permanent diet-induced metabolic slowing is not supported by any current scientific evidence moving on we have a common myth that serves more so as an excuse than anything else this idea that overweight people must have very slow metabolisms on the contrary it might surprise you to learn that it's actually the other way around the heavier you are the higher your resting metabolic rate tends to be in other words overweight individuals typically have a faster metabolism than people that maintain a healthy weight now of course someone that's overweight can also have a thyroid issue that drastically slows
down their metabolism however being overweight alone is not in itself proof or even a sign of a slow metabolism next we have the false belief that the best way to lose fat is with intermittent fasting and let me just say right away that my favorite way to burn fat is with intermittent fasting but just like there's no set in stone rule that requires you to eat five or six meals throughout the day there's also no set in stone rule that requires you to fast throughout the day as long as you consume the same number of
calories it doesn't matter whether you consume those calories by spreading them out evenly throughout the day or by packing them together into a short feeding window that's then followed by a fast for example a systematic review concluded that intermittent fasting produces very similar effects to continuous energy restriction when the goal is to reduce body weight and body fat they also went on to note that intermittent fasting itself doesn't create any specific biological conditions that will enhance weight loss however with that said for many people intermittent fasting can inadvertently lead to less calories being consumed throughout
the day which would help with weight loss for other people it can have a negative effect where intermittent fasting will lead them to eating more calories because they're not able to control their hunger so i always say set up your diet in a way that fits with your preferences and in a way that you can be consistent with our next myth is that diet soda will inhibit or block fat loss now diet soda does have its fair share of problems it's not exactly the healthiest beverages for you because it's usually full of aspartame however that
doesn't mean that it negatively impacts fat loss in fact research indicates that diet soda may even benefit weight loss if you use it to replace other high calorie beverages like regular soda so if you're struggling with giving up soda drinking diet soda can be a beneficial way to control your calories however do your best to drink less diet soda and more water over time another very common false belief is that you can turn fat into muscle to make a crystal clear it's actually physiologically impossible to turn body fat into muscle it's like trying to turn
a pear into a watermelon it just won't work but what you can do is you can burn fat and build muscle at the same time this happens most often when beginner lifters first start to exercise and lose weight since they're usually out of shape before getting started they can lose fat and gain muscle at the same time which coincidentally makes them believe that they turn the fat into muscle but this is actually not true myth number nine you can spot reduce belly fat by doing ab specific exercises well the sign shows that you actually can't
regardless of how many crunches you do or how much belly fat you have we've known this for a long time but somehow this myth continues to exist at a widespread level there are studies dating back to 2011 from the journal of strength and conditioning research that prove that you can't target body fat with specific exercises to prove this scientists had participants do four hours of ab training every single week for six weeks but even with all that effort the ab exercises led to no belly fat reduction or fat loss in general in fact the researchers
stated that there was no significant change in body weight body fat percentage abdominal circumference or abdominal skin fold measurements in other words if you want to get a slim and shredded midsection doing endless amounts of crunches and sit-ups is definitely not the answer next is the idea that you can't drink alcohol at all if you want to lose weight the truth is that you can lose weight even if you drink alcohol as long as you're still in a calorie deficit as shown by a number of studies so it's not true that you have to give
up all alcoholic beverages entirely if you want to drop pounds off the scale with that said alcohol does contain a decent number of calories seven calories per gram of alcohol to be exact it can also impair fat burning while you process the alcohol and people often consume high calorie junk foods when their willpower fades after having a couple drinks so for these reasons it's still wise to limit your drinking but you don't have to completely stop just to lose some weight another mistake is believing that dairy is uniquely fattening and i believe this too for
a while after all most dairy products come from cow's milk and cow's milk is produced by cows basically to help their calves grow into full grown cows however the truth is that dairy itself won't make you fatter than other sources that contain the same amount of calories randomized control trials show us that increased dairy consumption does not necessarily increase body fat levels with that said there are a couple things to keep in mind first it's typically easier to consume more liquid calories than solid calories so if you're randomly drinking glasses of milk throughout the day
you'll most likely struggle to lose any weight and the second thing is that about 65 of the human population has a reduced ability to digest lactose which is a sugar found in dairy products if your body can't digest lactose well consuming dairy can lead to bloating which some people misattribute as fat gain but bloating and fat gain are definitely not the same thing the next flawed weight loss myth is that you need cheat days in order to boost your metabolism and lose fat although cheat days can help some people manage their cravings better and ultimately
stick to their diet cheat days can also completely backfire for other people that turn their cheat meal into a huge binge eating session so you definitely shouldn't feel obligated to throw in cheat days because you're worried about something like your metabolism slowing down we can see proof of this in a study that evaluated the metabolic effects of eating at a hundred forty percent of calorie maintenance for three days on a high carb diet and despite that huge calorie surplus total daily energy expenditure increased by only seven percent leaving them in a 33 net calorie surplus
so bottom line going all out on your cheat meals won't increase your metabolism enough to make up for all those extra calories myth number 13 keto and other low carb diets are superior for fat loss well turns out this isn't true many studies show that the ratio of carbs to fat in a diet doesn't affect weight and fat loss when given the same caloric intake in other words keto and low carb diets are not superior for fat loss we have long studies and systematic reviews that clearly show that diets low in carbs and diets low
in fat work equally as well as long as the person dieting is actually able to stick to their diet plan so if you're on a very low carb diet and you happen to love carbs chances are very high that your diet is not going to work because you won't be sticking to it for very long another myth that i used to believe in is that you should never weigh yourself daily if you want to lose fat i myself and many other trainers used to believe that it was bad for your mental health to check your
weight more than once a week because doing so would create an obsession with the number on the scale but really the best advice is to not only rely on the number on the scale to measure your progress that's because whether you're a man or you're a woman adding muscle will make it look like you gained weight on the scale that's why you should also base your results on what you're seeing in the mirror not just the scale alone but there's really nothing wrong with weighing yourself more often in fact weighing yourself daily can actually optimize
fat loss for some people according to a 2015 systematic review the researchers in this study concluded that regular self-weighing can assist with weight loss and is not directly associated with negative psychological outcomes also another 2008 systematic review found that stepping on a scale regularly can make you less likely to regain pounds lost i do have to say though that this is one of those things that does depend on the person so if weighing yourself every day is a source of stress then simply do it less often next is the myth that fasted workouts burn more
fat in a small weight loss study researchers split 20 participants into two groups both groups maintained a daily calorie deficit of 500 calories and the only difference between the groups was that one would do three hours of fasted cardio per week while the other did the same amount of cardio but they did it in a fed state after four weeks both groups lost a significant amount of fat but there was no difference in fat loss between the two groups ultimately they concluded that it doesn't matter whether you work out fasted or fed as long as
you consume the same number of calories throughout the day both will produce similar fat loss results now we're down to our last two and myth number 16 is this very prevalent idea that you must do cardio to lose weight however a meta-analysis of 14 studies involving over 1800 overweight and obese people found that isolated aerobic exercise is not a very effective weight loss therapy for overweight and obese people another meta-analysis one that mostly focused on cardio also found that adding this aerobic exercise to a diet plan did not promote weight loss more than simply sticking
to the diet plan without adding in the cardio in this study the only difference between the group that was dieting and doing cardio versus the group that was just dieting without doing any cardio at all was 11 kilograms of weight loss versus 10.7 kilograms of weight loss not a significant difference finally our last myth is that sleep isn't that important for weight loss we have a huge meta-analysis that disproves this it involved over six hundred thousand adults and researchers found that poor sleepers are 55 percent more likely to become obese this is because low quality
sleep increases hunger by suppressing satiating hormones like leptin while raising the levels of your hunger hormone known as ghrelin as a result you'll feel hungrier and that could cause you to eat more calories not only does not sleeping enough make it harder to burn fat but it also leads to muscle loss which pushes you even further away from your fitness goals so those are the 17 common weight loss myths that many of you might have believed before watching this video i hope i've helped provide you with some clarity and if you feel that i've helped
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