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Fitness and diet myths that just won't go away

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Replies

  • dralicephd
    dralicephd Posts: 402 Member
    fr3smyl wrote: »
    Myth: drinking certain teas will make you poop out extra fat. Many of my family have believed this.

    Umm.. What?!?!?! :D That would be disturbing!!! I really got a bad mental image here. lol..
  • dralicephd
    dralicephd Posts: 402 Member
    Question: several people stated "starvation mode" as a myth. What do you mean by this?

    I ask because I'm trying to check my own faulty assumptions. :smile: (Trying to undo decades of terrible food and exercise advice over here.)
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    dralicephd wrote: »
    Question: several people stated "starvation mode" as a myth. What do you mean by this?

    I ask because I'm trying to check my own faulty assumptions. :smile: (Trying to undo decades of terrible food and exercise advice over here.)

    The effects commonly associated with the term are myths.

    You can't lose fat or weight.
    You'll gain weight.
    Happens if you skip a meal.

    Sadly the term was thrown out with the myths.

    Another term is now used in studies that means the same thing - metabolic adaptation.
    If you eat too little (genetics matter, amount of extra fat matters, body stress) you can stress the body into adapting and burning less than it otherwise might have. Never enough to stop fat loss though if you keep eating less and less.
    That fact coupled with a few other items can appear to lead to some of those same myths - increased cortisol with increased water weight could cause scale loss to stop, or increase.
    Muscle loss caused by that much deficit and slower metabolism will be bad combo when attempting to eat at a supposed maintenance level if goal weight reached.
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  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,091 Member
    "Steady state" is an exercise pace or duration.

    Well, that's maybe more of a silly implicit assumption or misstatement than a myth . . . but it's common and persistent.

    As in: "I do high intensity cardio because steady state is boring."

    There is LISS, MISS, and maybe even HISS (which wouldn't last long, relatively speaking 😉😆).

    "Steady state" is a constant pace, any constant pace: It's a pacing strategy, in contrast to intervals, for example (LIIT, MIIT, HIIT?).

    If a specific pace, it may be SS with respect to some duration: My 5 minute SS pace can be fairly fast, but my 5 hour SS better be relatively slow, eh?

    /pedantic

  • ythannah
    ythannah Posts: 4,371 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    In fact, if anything, it's now believed that repetitive motion exercise is a positive for avoiding lymphedema. Reasons are not clear, but one speculation is that the movement of muscles and tissues has a sort of pumping effect on the lymphatic fluid.

    I have lower limb lymphedema and this is correct.

    Back when I was first diagnosed I still had access to academic journals and found that most of the research at that time was being conducted in Europe, particularly Germany. Muscles move lymphatic fluid.
  • dralicephd
    dralicephd Posts: 402 Member
    I heard the following this weekend from a family member: "Calories in, calories out" is a lie!!!!

    Yes, nutrition is also important, but you can eat really well and still gain weight if you eat too many calories for the amount you expend. (I'm a living example of this and why I'm back on this site logging my food.)
  • wunderkindking
    wunderkindking Posts: 1,615 Member
    dralicephd wrote: »
    I've heard another one about how everybody has a "setpoint" weight and that it is hopeless to want to be smaller than that, because eventually your body will creep back to that setpoint. This makes no sense from a biology or evolutionary standpoint.

    However, it makes perfect sense if you consider people try an unsustainable lifestyle to obtain the weight loss and then eventually fall back on old habits. (That's not a biological "setpoint"!)

    I was thinking about that this weekend when I was telling someone I'd technically like to lose another couple of pounds because my brain likes multiples of 5, but ultimately even losing another couple of pounds would involve me changing things more than I was willing so where I am is just going to be where I am.
  • dralicephd
    dralicephd Posts: 402 Member
    nossmf wrote: »

    Today she still has a lot of ranch, but she has cut her former drenching in half. And she's down over 30 pounds. Coincidence?

    In case you haven't tried: yogurt-based dressings are usually great substitutes for the cream-based dressings. They taste creamy and are half the calories. The one I like is 45 calories for 2 tablespoons. Maybe she'd like that? She could go back to her normal "drenching" with less calories. :smile:
  • dralicephd
    dralicephd Posts: 402 Member
    nossmf wrote: »
    When my wife wanted to start losing weight at the start of the year, she asked for my help since I'm the food preparer in the family. Specifically, she wanted me to give her pre-portioned amounts of food, so she wouldn't have to think about it, just eat what's in front of her.

    Everything was going well at first...measured amounts of pasta, smaller dishes of ice cream, etc. But it all came to a head when I fixed her a salad and added a pre-measured amount of ranch dressing. She stared at it for over a minute, not quite believing how little I'd given her. Ultimately because she was doing so well in most other areas, she asked me to go ahead and give her the usual amount of dressing she was accustomed to receiving. I agreed, but insisted on measuring as I went. Turns out her "usual" was about six to seven times the "suggested serving" on the bottle, so even though she may have had "only a salad" for dinner, she was consuming over a thousand calories just in dressing. Blew her mind.

    Today she still has a lot of ranch, but she has cut her former drenching in half. And she's down over 30 pounds. Coincidence?

    Nooope. I am absolutely positive that I had days where the cream in my coffee, butter on toast and vegetables, mayo on my sandwich, and ranch on my salad added up to 1K of calories. My diet? Otherwise perfectly reasonable.

    Freaking condiments.

    And it's weird now because I CANNOT UNDERSTAND HOw I KNEW those things were 100 calories or so a tablespoon, but until I started logging? Never clicked. Wild as heck. I'd have said, and meant 'I'm not eating that much!' and I wasn't. I also wasn't eating over all badly.

    CONDIMENTS.

    You have reminded me to measure my salad dressing tonight to make sure I haven't been creeping up with mine. I don't think I have, but........ :/
  • nossmf
    nossmf Posts: 11,335 Member
    I personally avoid the question of how much dressing is to much by not having ANY dressing on my salad. I prefer the crunch of the veggies and actually tasting them, rather than tasting nothing but ranch with the knowledge I'm getting vitamins with each bite. My wife can't understand how I can eat a salad dry, but to each their own.
  • J72FIT
    J72FIT Posts: 6,000 Member
    Not sure if this falls into the category of myth but I am tired of hearing the term "optimized"...
  • nossmf
    nossmf Posts: 11,335 Member
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    Blocked and reported.

    I'm probably being dense right now, but was this an attempt at humor I don't understand? Or did I somehow offend in a way I don't understand?

    Reminds me of my cell phone game I play. I created an account named after a character in my novel, played for years with that name. Now out of the blue, in the chat rooms, my account name is bleeped out as somehow offensive, no explanation given, just bleeped out, whether I'm posting or somebody is citing me by name. So confused...
  • 33gail33
    33gail33 Posts: 1,155 Member
    nossmf wrote: »
    I personally avoid the question of how much dressing is to much by not having ANY dressing on my salad. I prefer the crunch of the veggies and actually tasting them, rather than tasting nothing but ranch with the knowledge I'm getting vitamins with each bite. My wife can't understand how I can eat a salad dry, but to each their own.

    Well ranch is horrific (imo) but no dressing at all wouldn't cut it for me. A little spritz of oil and vinegar or balsamic just brings out the flavor - if I order a salad in a restaurant I have to have the dressing on the side or it is inedible with the amount they add.
  • SuzySunshine99
    SuzySunshine99 Posts: 2,989 Member
    What's with all the somatotype posts lately?
    It seems like these things go in waves...like whatever Facebook posts are currently making the rounds.
  • wunderkindking
    wunderkindking Posts: 1,615 Member
    nossmf wrote: »
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    Blocked and reported.

    I'm probably being dense right now, but was this an attempt at humor I don't understand? Or did I somehow offend in a way I don't understand?

    Reminds me of my cell phone game I play. I created an account named after a character in my novel, played for years with that name. Now out of the blue, in the chat rooms, my account name is bleeped out as somehow offensive, no explanation given, just bleeped out, whether I'm posting or somebody is citing me by name. So confused...

    She's just teasing you about your preference for dry salad.
  • ythannah
    ythannah Posts: 4,371 Member
    nossmf wrote: »
    I personally avoid the question of how much dressing is to much by not having ANY dressing on my salad. I prefer the crunch of the veggies and actually tasting them, rather than tasting nothing but ranch with the knowledge I'm getting vitamins with each bite. My wife can't understand how I can eat a salad dry, but to each their own.

    You should probably call it Undressed Salad and then it'll be all trendy-sounding nouvelle cuisine.

    I make a quinoa/chickpea/black bean meatless taco filling and I often dump it on top of a salad instead of dressing.