Wednesday, February 25, 2009

3 Weight Loss Myths That Can Put Your Life in Jeopardy

By Frances Norah Smith

Health related articles contain lots of information when it comes to weight loss. It includes useful tips that actually work and also those that don't. The weight loss industry is filled with myths, not to mention misleading and inaccurate information as some tend to change the facts for their own gains or partly due to the lack of knowledge. As a result, fad diets, weight loss supplements and pills that don't work came about. In this article I will discuss three such weight loss myths.

1. Myth#1: Spot reduction of fat is possible: Not totally true. This claim is not true to a certain extent and it has been backed up by weight loss experts. Many have been mislead that if you do workouts that focus on a certain area, you can spot reduce fat.

Here is an example. By doing crunches and leg lifts, your main focus here is to lose fat in the abdominal area. However, in reality, this is not the case. Instead of losing belly fat, you will reduce the muscle mass below the abdomen. A solution to this is to combine a healthy diet that will help you to increase your metabolism rate and help to burn fat, together with doing workouts like crunches and leg lifts.

2. Myth#2: A drastic cut down on calorie intake reduces your body fat: This myth has pushed many a person on the brink of crash dieting. People take to crash dieting in the hope of shedding those extra pounds, least realizing that crash dieting harm their bodies instead of helping them. As a matter of fact, when you starve or fast, your body realizes that you are going to kill it and then it goes into the starvation mode. While in starvation mode, your body slows down your metabolic rate and burns your muscles (instead of fat, which is kept in reserve) for producing energy. This way, you don't lose much fat at all; if anything, you lose your valuable muscles. And once you return to your normal diet, you will gain extra weight!

3. Myth#3: Doing cardio exercises alone can assist in weight loss: Cardio exercises can definitely assist in weight loss however it is not the only form of exercise that is able to help you lose weight. Different form of exercises like aerobics can also have the same weight loss effects. Other exercise like weight lifting on the other hand, is a much better exercise compared to both cardio and aerobics. It assists in weight loss and also helps you gain muscles at the same time.

I hope that this article has helped you to be aware of the misleading information about weight loss. - 15438

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