You’ve been planning to lose weight. You’ve been needing to lose weight.
The jeans that used to fit you like a glove are becoming harder and harder to button up. Climbing the stairs is enough to make you feel a bit winded. And you can’t even drive past a gym these days without feeling guilty.
They say that you can’t escape the consequences of a bad diet. But whenever you hit up the internet, dieting myths and urban legends abound.
If you’re not careful, this can have far-reaching consequences for your health. There are popular diet myths out there that keep us fat. And there are weight loss myths circulating the internet right now that will only leave you frustrated and unhappy with the progress you’ve made in your fitness journey.
Your efforts to lose weight don’ have to be like that, however. Keep reading to see our list of common myths about nutrition.
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1. Your Favorites Need to Go
A lot of people take a “New day, new me.” approach to dieting and exercise. In practice, this often means going through the cupboard, raiding the pantry, and doing everything you can to make sure that you don’t have any snacks and sweets sitting in the house and calling your name.
There’s nothing wrong with cutting down on your sugar intake. In fact, reducing the sugar in your diet is a good thing if you’re trying to slim down. But the problem with starting your diet off with restriction after restriction is that it can be a lot harder to turn that healthy eating into a sustainable long-term habit.
Here’s why:
Dieting often involves doing things that we don’t always enjoy. Coffee often tastes better with a little more sugar in it. And sometimes that chocolate bar is exactly what the doctor ordered after a particularly grueling day at work.
If you start off restricting yourself and making plans to never touch your favorite foods again, it becomes a lot easier to fall off the wagon. In short, you don’t want to be the person who inhales entire cakes and has to actively fight off the drool every time you see your favorite desserts and treats in the grocery store.
But when you’re eating treats in moderation and fitting things within your macros, you have a much better shot at making healthy eating a permanent part of your life.
2. Skipping Breakfast Can Help You Lose Weight Faster
From a calories-in-and-calories-out perspective, the idea of skipping breakfast has a certain appeal. You can save on the calories that you would have spent eating pancakes or toast and instead have a nice dessert or a greasier lunch.
But before you start scheduling important work meetings to “After I’ve eaten lunch.”, it’s important to keep in mind that eating breakfast or not eating breakfast doesn’t make that much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. However, it is important to understand how breakfast fits into your weight loss goals.
According to the studies quoted by Healthline, skipping breakfast can help with intermittent fasting. And eating breakfast isn’t necessarily the metabolism-boosting secret weapon that we’ve traditionally thought of it as.
However, if skipping breakfast is enough to throw you off and leave you feeling uncomfortable and hungry right up until lunch, you can eat while still staying on track. And if eating breakfast is causing you to cut your fasts short, then there’s nothing wrong with continuing to do what works for you.
The important thing is that you’re eating healthy throughout the rest of the day.
3. Carbs are Your Worst Enemy
Low-carb and keto diets are incredibly popular online these days. So much so that people will openly have discussions about how to reduce their carb intake at all costs.
However, while you don’t want to have too many processed carbs and refined sugars, it turns out that not all carbs are created equal.
Tim Ferris, the author of The 4-Hour Workweek and The 4-Hour Body set the internet on fire by shedding an impressive 20 pounds in 30 days even while having a weekly cheat day. His diet featured lentils.
What a lot of people don’t realize about carbs is that the body often works better with them than without. And if that isn’t convincing enough, there are plenty of healthier foods, like potatoes or brown rice that can be regularly consumed without derailing your weight loss goals. It simply goes back to making sure that you’ve found a diet strategy that works for you.
4. You Should Be Able to Lose Weight Quickly
If you spend enough time on YouTube or the internet at large, it’s impossible to miss all those “I Got Abs in 6 Weeks!” videos or those “I Tried This Diet and Lost 40 Pounds in 2 Months!”. You get the picture.
And you can often see the people in the comments of the videos talking about how they tried it but didn’t get the same results as the original person.
In all of the discussion around why some people are able to shed weight like they’re shedding coats while others have to work harder to lose the exact same amount of weight, there’s another important component of weight loss that people need to be aware of:
Genetics and biological differences.
People who have PCOS or are on certain types of medication may find it difficult to manage their weight. But at the same time, some people are genetically predisposed to do better on low-fat and high-protein diets while others need a few more carbs to get by.
Fortunately, companies like DietCypher can take your DNA and your genetic information and then use it to help you put together the ideal diet for your body.
Dieting Myths and Their Impact on You
Dieting and weight loss can often feel like a giant game of telephone. An acquaintance sees that one person is looking good and they ask them what they’ve been doing. And then that person tells another friend. And by the time the cycle is over, there will be three or four dieting myths that have been firmly established as “truth” in people’s minds.
That’s why it pays to be careful with what you hear. You never know when the diet myth that seems like it should make sense will come back and make your weight loss journey harder than it needs to be.
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