CrossFit South Bend

Today we are gonna talk about fat loss myths. The overwhelming majority of people who come to see us are very much interested in weight loss and health. Usually what people mean by weight loss is fat loss. Presumably someone doesn’t wanna lose muscle, they wanna be losing fat and building muscle or keeping muscle. Let’s talk about some common myths that we tend to see when we work with people.

Myth #1 If you work out enough you can eat whatever you want. 

I would say number is working out can not fix a crappy diet. We tell people this over and over and over again. Just do the math on the situation. At most, you’re gonna be at the gym, what, five hours a week? Let’s even say six or seven hours a week. Just mathematically that’s gonna be a fraction of a fraction of the time that you’re gonna spend eating food, sleeping, distressing, all these lifestyle things that are absolutely necessary for health. So while we think working out is tremendously important, we wouldn’t be in the gym business if we didn’t, for your overall health and fitness it is not enough to overcome a crappy diet and it’s especially not enough for fat loss.

Myth #2 You can always lose fat if you burn more calories than you consume.

Another thing I would say is the notion of calories in, calories out. Now, let me preface this by saying I do think calories are important and I do think they can be important when you are talking about fat loss. One common thing that gets confused is the notion of actually trying to decrease your calories versus tracking your calories. Ideally you would want some way of eating that spontaneously leads to a calorie reduction in the food you’re eating without having to worry about it. The type of eating that we recommended here, namely real wholefood that’s nutrient dense, that gives you even blood sugar throughout the day, that is not psychologically addictive, tends to lead, generally speaking, to fewer calories without having to track calories. Now that isn’t perfect, people can eat tons of bananas or jar of coconut oil and that will mess things up. But generally speaking, that approach, at least initially, will tend to yield more benefits, than trying to get a 1,000 or 1,500 calories with not so good food. The best of both worlds is of course food quality as the base, and then building on top of that with some calories in, calories out and maybe some macros.

Myth #3 If you eat less and workout more you always lose fat 

Another thing I would, in regard to both of those, is this idea of eating less and working out more. I’ve seen this over and over and over and over again backfire on people. You may have seen this person in the gym running on the treadmill, 45 minutes to an hour a day, and he or she is eating a 1,000 calories and they’re wondering, “Why am I not losing that last 10 pounds?” Well you’re stressing your body out. Working out is a stress on the body, in particular excess cardio can be a stress on the body. Too few calories and too few nutrients is a stress on the body, and if you’re already stressed that can lead to more stress. It’s not to say that there isn’t a time and a place for eating less and working out more, but in general we’ve seen even more benefit from eating more, real whole food and eating adequate calories, and working out less, but smarter, working out more efficiently in a way in which is going to help you overall.

Myth #4 You can spot reduce fat from different locations on your body

Another fat loss myth that I see is the notion of spot reducing. Sometimes we’ll see people who said that they wanna spot reduce on their triceps, or they just wanna spot reduce belly fat or their legs. To a certain extent you can do this, belly fat tends to be more associated with cortisol and stress issues, excess leg fat particularly in women can be related to estrogen and hormonal issues, things like that. But you’re not gonna be able to zoom in and sniper target each of these things, it’s going to be something where overall you’re going to need to lose fat in your body, and then something that will be even more important to your fat loss is gonna be getting those hormones in line to even reduce in those areas. It’s not like you can cut your calories a certain amount and it will specifically go to your legs or specifically go to your tricep, it’s going to go more broadly over the rest of the body.

Myth #5 Fad diets are a great way to lose fat long term. ​​​​​​​

And then the last fat loss myth I would say is the notion that fat diets work. We see this over and over and over again. I suppose if your goal is very quick, short term weight loss that’s not gonna stick, then yeah, a fat diet can work certainly, you can lose 20, 30 pounds. But presumably most people want to lose weight long term and keep it off long term. They don’t wanna go through this yo-yo. Fat diets may get you some quick water weight loss, they’ll probably even help you lose some muscle, which that’s not so good either, and then you’ll get some temporarily fat loss, but it’s not gonna be long term sustainable, ’cause you’re not eating adequately in terms of nutrients and calories for your body and your body is just gonna balance back.

What we propose here is real, wholefood for a more sustainable, long term way to lose fat, and we’ve seen that be incredibly effective. If you guys are interested in losing fat, please hit us up, contact us, we’ll be happy to meet with you. Thanks so much for tuning in and we’ll see you next time.

Best,

Robby