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Fitness and diet myths that just won't go away
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Just remembered one my SO's daughter shared back when she was in her early 20s: people who are happy gain weight. I guess if life is good you have more of an appetite or enjoy food more or something?
I assume this is why she herself gained about 60 lbs following her marriage. It had nothing to do with the dinner parties or the nightly bottle of wine or the takeout pizzas. It was because she was happy.
I wonder if this one is related to the idea that when people are stressed they quit eating. I think that's definitely true for some people, but it's not a universal as is sometimes assumed - I would imagine a fair few of us here have dealt with the opposite problem! (I know I have!)
There's also a really yucky assumption in there that the only reason one would try to stay in shape is because they fear a breakup or divorce.
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There are a lot of unfairly demonized foods. A lot of people still think potatoes have "no nutrition" and will rant about it when I mention my potato dishes.
Which is wild because potatoes are nutritionally complete, or nearly so.Just remembered one my SO's daughter shared back when she was in her early 20s: people who are happy gain weight. I guess if life is good you have more of an appetite or enjoy food more or something?
I assume this is why she herself gained about 60 lbs following her marriage. It had nothing to do with the dinner parties or the nightly bottle of wine or the takeout pizzas. It was because she was happy.
I'd like a word with your SO's daughter. I've been clinically depressed AND fat as hell since elementary school, so...11 -
Today at work, one of the guys was telling everyone how you will burn more fat if first thing in the morning, you eat a half banana and then do your cardio. He claimed your body will then be forced to burn stored fat during your workout. According to him, working out later in the day meant only burning the foods you'd eaten so far that day and not really burning any of your stored fat until you'd exhausted your daily food intake.
Someone please confirm or debunk this one.1 -
Today at work, one of the guys was telling everyone how you will burn more fat if first thing in the morning, you eat a half banana and then do your cardio. He claimed your body will then be forced to burn stored fat during your workout. According to him, working out later in the day meant only burning the foods you'd eaten so far that day and not really burning any of your stored fat until you'd exhausted your daily food intake.
Someone please confirm or debunk this one.
There is a great answer to this on Physqnomics, but the short answer is, yes you will burn more fat to fuel the exercise, but in the long run, fasted training has no significant difference.to fed training on long term body fat loss.3 -
Today at work, one of the guys was telling everyone how you will burn more fat if first thing in the morning, you eat a half banana and then do your cardio. He claimed your body will then be forced to burn stored fat during your workout. According to him, working out later in the day meant only burning the foods you'd eaten so far that day and not really burning any of your stored fat until you'd exhausted your daily food intake.
Someone please confirm or debunk this one.
In addition to the prior, the intensity of the workout for you is going to indicate the energy source used.
And how fast after the meal your insulin has dropped back down to decide where that energy source comes from.
If intense you are going to having higher ratio of glucose than fat, if you just ate and glucose is higher then there you go, you'll use what just ate and some of what is stored already.
Fat will be what was eaten too. If not much fat eaten - glucose will be used even more.
Insulin will drop sooner - and your source will be stored fat and glucose at same ratio for intensity of workout done.
If you actually do the math with numbers even potentially possible - you are talking minutes of time.
Because frankly someone that just ate a huge meal of carbs and insulin that hasn't stored those already - is not likely to be doing something intense.
Not even sure how he gets a shot of carbs forces fat burn during workout.
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I haven't a clue about any of the chemistry. IS there any additional benefit to the 'when' of a workout as far as fat loss goes?0
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Not sure about any of the chemistry. IS there any additional benefit to the 'when' of a workout as far as fat loss goes?
Not enough to outweigh personal preferences or practicalities, in any decent study I've seen. Maybe zero.
Ditto for exercising fueled or fasted.
If there is a difference, it's numerically trivial.
On subjects like this, listen to @Heybales.
Oversimplifying, I believe, only slightly:
Immediate fuel source during exercise varies primarily based on exercise intensity, and secondarily based on what fuel type was recently consumed, thus readily bioavailable.
Overall, in the long run, total overall calorie deficit (shortfall) gets made up by burning stored body fat. *When* that happens doesn't much matter, for weight management goals. It can matter for endurance athletes' performance.
Just my understanding.0 -
I haven't a clue about any of the chemistry. IS there any additional benefit to the 'when' of a workout as far as fat loss goes?
As several have mentioned - no.
In addition - no because the fat loss occurs because of keeping a calorie deficit long term, not because of the exercise done by itself.
Some people could do a badly timed workout with food eaten and it makes it really really hard for them to adhere to their diet plan that day.
That would be the change to "when" for YOU personally so the exercise doesn't make it difficult to adhere to your diet plan.
Like maybe you do an intense early morning workout, so no food eaten or you'd puke it up.
But then you have low blood sugar when finished, snarf a donut, get high blood sugar, insulin overreaction, now low blood sugar again - and end up feeling even more hungry even though the donut provided more calories than the workout provided. So you eat another.
And now even though the workout allowed you to eat more, you have a challenge to your normal daily diet having consumed so much more.
Frankly that effect happens to people without the workout too, so.....
It's all about testing what helps YOU.
Nothing special or magical that is meaningful compared to the different ways YOU might react differently.3 -
"Eating late will make you fatter!"
No, eating more calories than your recommended amount will. You don't gain more weight based on the time of day.6 -
Drinking a protein supplement after a workout helps repair muscle right away.
Well yes and no. While some studies show this happening with elite athletes, there really aren't any that confirm it does the same for the average person who just works out hard. At best, you're just supplying more protein to your diet. At worst, you're just consuming more calories that could be used for something that you may really like to eat instead. Don't buy into the hype.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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Oh and drinking a gallon of water a day for weight loss.
Lol, I see lots of people today lugging around gigantic water jugs in the gym. Most of them, their bodies haven't changed for the better in months.
When asked how much I drink my answer is usually "don't really know cause I don't track it". Why? Because there's water in just about everything I drink anyway.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition 7 -
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
According to cereal companies. ALL MEALS are the most important meal of the day. Personally I don't eat traditional morning breakfast.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
According to cereal companies. ALL MEALS are the most important meal of the day. Personally I don't eat traditional morning breakfast.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
Well, since “breakfast” literally means breaking your fast…. It is the most important meal. Because if you don’t break your fast you don’t last very long.
Breathairians aren’t real.
But ya. That ad line sure does sell a lot of cereal.3 -
Yes the literal term applies if that's the case, but in the good old USA (and likely some other countries) breakfast is associated with MORNING eating. Heck they even combined with with late am eating by calling in BRUNCH since it's so close to lunch.MargaretYakoda wrote: »Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
According to cereal companies. ALL MEALS are the most important meal of the day. Personally I don't eat traditional morning breakfast.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
Well, since “breakfast” literally means breaking your fast…. It is the most important meal. Because if you don’t break your fast you don’t last very long.
Breathairians aren’t real.
But ya. That ad line sure does sell a lot of cereal.
I don't eat breakfast. I eat lunch.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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Have any of you worked customer service?
You know how many times you hear "must be free" when something doesn't ring up, and you kind of force polite laughter because you've heard it 9000 times by now and are just over it?
That's me with 'breakfast' means 'to break a fast'.
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"Weighing every day isn't good for weight loss"
My friend said this to me the other day. I told her it's how I keep myself in check. I've lost 80+lbs since 2018, and have maintained it within a few pounds for the last six months/ish, tracking daily via Libra since the first day(900+ days of weight logged). I still have ~25 to lose, but I have found weighing daily to be helpful, to me, even when I am not focused on losing. When I am losing, it definitely helps me manage my process if I find myself losing too quickly. It stops me for slipping too much. For some, it can truly be unhelpful, but it works for me. It's definitely not a one-size-fits-all, but it's definitely not a bad thing either.
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wunderkindking wrote: »Have any of you worked customer service?
You know how many times you hear "must be free" when something doesn't ring up, and you kind of force polite laughter because you've heard it 9000 times by now and are just over it?
That's me with 'breakfast' means 'to break a fast'.
Yeah, I think it's just said by people so they can point out that they are smart enough to know the origin of a word.
If someone says, "I don't eat breakfast.", we all know what they mean. It doesn't mean they never eat.
Over time, the modern meaning of a word can evolve, regardless of its origin.11 -
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
According to cereal companies. ALL MEALS are the most important meal of the day. Personally I don't eat traditional morning breakfast.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
Amen. I haven't been able to eat breakfast since puberty, when some strange alignment of hormones started making me very nauseous for the first three or four waking hours. Yet despite skipping the morning meal for the past 45ish years, I've enjoyed above-average health.
I also work out first thing in the morning because I have more energy and motivation, even in a fasted state, than I do in the evenings.7 -
Drinking a protein supplement after a workout helps repair muscle right away.
Well yes and no. While some studies show this happening with elite athletes, there really aren't any that confirm it does the same for the average person who just works out hard. At best, you're just supplying more protein to your diet. At worst, you're just consuming more calories that could be used for something that you may really like to eat instead. Don't buy into the hype.
I don't buy into the hype, haven't noticed any significant changes whether I have a protein shake following a workout or hours later. For me, I just get hungry after a workout, so if it's gonna be a bit before my next meal, a protein shake makes a good snack to tide me over.3 -
cmhubbard92 wrote: »"Weighing every day isn't good for weight loss"
My friend said this to me the other day. I told her it's how I keep myself in check. I've lost 80+lbs since 2018, and have maintained it within a few pounds for the last six months/ish, tracking daily via Libra since the first day(900+ days of weight logged). I still have ~25 to lose, but I have found weighing daily to be helpful, to me, even when I am not focused on losing. When I am losing, it definitely helps me manage my process if I find myself losing too quickly. It stops me for slipping too much. For some, it can truly be unhelpful, but it works for me. It's definitely not a one-size-fits-all, but it's definitely not a bad thing either.
I go through this as well. It's funny to me because the people who think I am weird for weighing myself every morning are either...
1. Never had to watch their weight, or...
2. Are overweight and out of shape...5 -
wunderkindking wrote: »Have any of you worked customer service?
You know how many times you hear "must be free" when something doesn't ring up, and you kind of force polite laughter because you've heard it 9000 times by now and are just over it?
That's me with 'breakfast' means 'to break a fast'.
At the grocery store yesterday, the lady ahead of me needed to argue about the piece of seemingly everything she bought. This should be X, that should be Y. I could see the checker was getting exasperated. So when it was finally my turn, I started with "those are free," "you guys are gonna pay me $100 to accept that" etc. It was absurd enough that I got her to smile.11 -
wunderkindking wrote: »Have any of you worked customer service?
You know how many times you hear "must be free" when something doesn't ring up, and you kind of force polite laughter because you've heard it 9000 times by now and are just over it?
That's me with 'breakfast' means 'to break a fast'.
No no no no…. You’re right. My bad.
For what it’s worth, I eat so slowly that I have basically one meal a day, all day, with periods of nibbling stuff and periods of eating things that were served hot but now aren’t.5 -
cmhubbard92 wrote: »"Weighing every day isn't good for weight loss"
My friend said this to me the other day. I told her it's how I keep myself in check. I've lost 80+lbs since 2018, and have maintained it within a few pounds for the last six months/ish, tracking daily via Libra since the first day(900+ days of weight logged). I still have ~25 to lose, but I have found weighing daily to be helpful, to me, even when I am not focused on losing. When I am losing, it definitely helps me manage my process if I find myself losing too quickly. It stops me for slipping too much. For some, it can truly be unhelpful, but it works for me. It's definitely not a one-size-fits-all, but it's definitely not a bad thing either.
I go through this as well. It's funny to me because the people who think I am weird for weighing myself every morning are either...
1. Never had to watch their weight, or...
2. Are overweight and out of shape...
Absolutely!
I also found out that some people find it weird that I weigh and log my food... Meanwhile, they're willing to hand out 100s to spam ads about melting body fat away, even after asking how I lost the weight. I don't have money to throw around for a "miracle pill", and I trust myself, now, to make the right choices to get to where I need and want to be.7 -
That there is some abstract amount of exercise that is universally "too much exercise" or "too much exercise unless someone is a professional athlete". By "amount", I mean to consider both time and objective intensity (such as pace).
No. There is some amount of exercise that is excessive for a particular person at a particular level of fitness. There is some amount of exercise that will not fit into a particular person's life without ruining their life balance (i.e., it will prevent having enough time and energy for other things important to/for that person).
Or, that there is some abstract amount of exercise that is universally "the right amount of exercise".
There probably really is some amount of exercise that's "too little exercise" - like less than that standard 150 minutes a week of cardio and 2 days of strength training beloved by various national health-promotion authorities? - though that's somewhat individual and situational, too.
Also, slightly different myth, that "exercise" has a different effect on the body than the same activity done for reasons other than just intentional exercise. Honest, I've seen people propose that, essentially: That if you walk 5 miles at X pace on the job, that's somehow going to have a different fitness or calorie (or something) effect than walking 5 miles at X pace just in order to get the exercise. Activity calories matter, even if the activity is paid, produces a useful end product besides calorie burn, etc. (Most people realize this. A few seem not to.)9 -
P.S. I just re-read through a big chunk of this thread. Two reactions:
1. It's a fun thread: Thank you for it, @ninerbuff. (That's why I kept going once I started re-reading.)
2. It's completely hilarious how many times a sequence like this has been repeated in the thread:
"Myth: breakfast is the most important meal"
"it is the most important, because you can't literally skip breakfast: you break your fast the first time you eat in the day, no matter what time or foods you eat"
"no, everyone knows that breakfast refers to the meal that happens first thing in the morning, who cares about word origins".5 -
P.S. I just re-read through a big chunk of this thread. Two reactions:
1. It's a fun thread: Thank you for it, @ninerbuff. (That's why I kept going once I started re-reading.)
2. It's completely hilarious how many times a sequence like this has been repeated in the thread:
"Myth: breakfast is the most important meal"
"it is the most important, because you can't literally skip breakfast: you break your fast the first time you eat in the day, no matter what time or foods you eat"
"no, everyone knows that breakfast refers to the meal that happens first thing in the morning, who cares about word origins".
*Breathairians are still scam artists, tho….
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Clippless pedals are faster because people power the bike by pulling up. Only when sprinting uphill.
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Speed/pace doesn't affect calorie burn.
Of course it does, just that the effect is small for walking and running.
Going any speed means overcoming whatever resistance is holding you back from that. Including air resistance, which increases with the square of your speed. If you're talking about walking 3 vs 3.5 mph that's such a small difference that you can ignore it. When you're on a bike, the difference in how much energy it takes to go 30 vs 35 mph is staggering.
If you don't do exercises where this matters, in you don't need to know. You can land a rocket on the moon with Newtonian physics. But I've been "corrected" for asking about speed and conditions when somebody in the exercise forum asks about calories on a bike, by well meaning people who don't include speed in walking calcs and think it's universally not a factor.5 -
That there is some abstract amount of exercise that is universally "too much exercise" or "too much exercise unless someone is a professional athlete". By "amount", I mean to consider both time and objective intensity (such as pace).
No. There is some amount of exercise that is excessive for a particular person at a particular level of fitness. There is some amount of exercise that will not fit into a particular person's life without ruining their life balance (i.e., it will prevent having enough time and energy for other things important to/for that person).
Or, that there is some abstract amount of exercise that is universally "the right amount of exercise".
There probably really is some amount of exercise that's "too little exercise" - like less than that standard 150 minutes a week of cardio and 2 days of strength training beloved by various national health-promotion authorities? - though that's somewhat individual and situational, too.
Also, slightly different myth, that "exercise" has a different effect on the body than the same activity done for reasons other than just intentional exercise. Honest, I've seen people propose that, essentially: That if you walk 5 miles at X pace on the job, that's somehow going to have a different fitness or calorie (or something) effect than walking 5 miles at X pace just in order to get the exercise. Activity calories matter, even if the activity is paid, produces a useful end product besides calorie burn, etc. (Most people realize this. A few seem not to.)
Related to both of these - I've recently had, out of the blue, several people suggest to me that my new habit of walking pretty much anywhere within a 1.5 mile radius of my house is somehow bizarre and dangerous and not worth it in terms of calories burned. It's true that there's challenging topography, and if I'm transporting a lot of heavy things I will drive instead (e.g. the grocery store). If I go out for a walk for exercise only, it's fine. But if I'm visiting a friend or going to the dentist or the library, well....that's just crazy. Who ever heard of using your own two feet to go somewhere you need to go?
This isn't an exercise myth per se but I have realized that the "time saved" by driving short distances is not as significant as I used to believe, especially when contending with street/pay parking (very common where I live) and the process of loading a bunch of kids in the car. Same with parking right next to an entrance to a store. When I do drive, I park far away and while I might spend an extra couple minutes walking to and from the entrance (increasing NEAT for the win!) navigating the lot with my car is a lot easier and faster when I'm not right in the middle of all the action!16 -
NorthCascades wrote: »Speed/pace doesn't affect calorie burn.
Of course it does, just that the effect is small for walking and running.
Going any speed means overcoming whatever resistance is holding you back from that. Including air resistance, which increases with the square of your speed. If you're talking about walking 3 vs 3.5 mph that's such a small difference that you can ignore it. When you're on a bike, the difference in how much energy it takes to go 30 vs 35 mph is staggering.
If you don't do exercises where this matters, in you don't need to know. You can land a rocket on the moon with Newtonian physics. But I've been "corrected" for asking about speed and conditions when somebody in the exercise forum asks about calories on a bike, by well meaning people who don't include speed in walking calcs and think it's universally not a factor.
Oh, man, yes. And that same general idea is what makes rowing (very slightly, gradually) progressive in a strength sense, which is an implication on a different front. Each faster stroke requires more power to accelerate the boat (or flywheel). Keep doing it, and one gets stronger . . . slowly, veryVery slowly. I assume the same is true for biking, to some extent.
So, the myth I'm attempting to debunk here is the one that says there is no cardio that increases strength/muscle. I believe there is (and presumably more than one type). It's just that it's an extremely slow, inefficient route, if increasing strength/muscle is the key goal, versus, just, say, having fun or something.3
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