Top 10 MFP community falsehoods

TL;DR - There is no secret to fat loss. The only way to lose fat is to force your body to burn fat. The only way to do that is to consume fewer calories than you burn every day. The only way to know for sure if you're doing that is to measure your intake, your weight, and your fat mass as precisely and as often as possible. Use these measurements to verify and adjust your diet and exercise plan, and you will succeed. All the rest of the crap is just crap.

1. Broscience

January 8, 2013 Urban Word of the Day
Broscience is the predominant brand of reasoning in bodybuilding circles where the anecdotal reports of jacked dudes are considered more credible than scientific research.


2. Broscience

A sarcastic term implying that the time tested, muscle building wealth of knowledge developed and utilized by successful, experienced bodybuilders is inferior to the continually shifting hypotheses of articulate, textbook-savvy 155lb. chemists with little or no real world first-person experience to substantiate their conclusions. The term "Broscience" is oft repeated on bodybuilding and fitness oriented internet forums in an attempt to demonstrate online dominance as a substitution for success in the arena of actual bodybuilding.



I've wondered about this term since I never heard of it before coming to MFP. I looked it up and came up with these two definitions in the Urban Dictionary. I'm kind of tired so, maybe, I am misunderstanding. But, do these two definitions slam both physically fit folks AND scientists?

LOL the first seems to be knocking the physically fit. The second, scientists.

Not sure i'ts all about these particular types of forums. All sorts of forums have their resident experts ( or so they say )

What I found funny was that both 1 & 2 have good access to steroids .. 1 uses them and 1 supplies them , but joking aside many forums on many subjects all over the internet have those who just log on to ridicule, spew nonsense and others who will copy and paste their new found wisdom from wikipedia to make themselves sound superior.

I think information is all good but you do have to separate the wheat from the chaff. What works for person(a) may not work for others and I find people who are destructive / sarcastic in their postings are only really here for their own entertainment.

OP is trying to help, enjoyed the post but recognise it's flaws in some areas and I know diddly ..

Neither of those definitions lines up with how I use the term broscience. It's not only bodybuilders or only nerds who are guilty. It's anyone who blindly repeats bad advice for any reason. Bodybuilders often seem to think that they have the answers because of their personal success. Some of them do, some don't. Personal success is not scientific research, and is prone to all sorts of error. Not the least of which is the attribution of results to things that have no causal link, only a correlative one. Nerdy kids also are guilty of it. It's difficult to see how a theory plays out if you don't put it into practice. That doesn't mean you have to have already lost 200 lbs of fat and gained 100 lbs of muscle to know whether a particular bit of research is sane... but it does help to have the context of seeing a theory in action.

The way I use the term "broscience":

3) Preaching of unfounded ideas or unproven methods as fact because "it worked for a guy I know". That sort of thing.

Holy crap., I went to bed and came back to a huge thread... cool, I guess . I'll choose this one to respond to, because I respect this person's opinion and knowledge more than perhaps even my own.

The biggest falsehoods are "I'm experiencing X, therefore X is the truth for everyone" followed closely by "that doesn't apply to me, we are all different".

The balance is not in either statement.

Yes, plateaus are a phenomenon mostly generated by improper adherence and inconsistency in diet and/or exercise. But they are very much a real experience - people do see weight loss plateau and stop and the reasons vary. It seems that you make the assumption that one just "needs to stick to the plan" and everything will be resolved. Except this clearly ignores the simple fact the adherence (you have problems with "discipline"?) is a multi-faceted element that touches on emotional and physiological interactions. Why do binges occur? Why is adherence hard? Why do most diets fail?
"You have no discipline" is not only patently false but not helpful. Inconsistent discipline in most things is a fact of life as priorities change or get impacted by external influences - how well one adjusts to them matters.

Eat more to lose weight actually works for many people if it reduces cravings and increases adherence and provides sufficient energy to perform. Your rapid loss project is not the way everyone needs or wants to go. I'm quite comfortable at my very slow recomp as I eat food I enjoy. And that enjoyment is part of the lifestyle I want to life. I would not stick to it long term if I was eating 1200. Adherence and satisfaction can be key long term elements for many.

The same goes for people who swear that even for obese people, a specific number of lbs per week is the maximum "healthy" rate of loss. There is no science to support that exact number. There *is* science to support the limit of roughly 6% of your body's fat mass per week as an upper limit on the rate of fat loss.

Actually not true. There are a lot of possible complications due to rapid weight loss - from pituitary damage to gall stones. Nutritional needs are a lot harder to meet at larger cuts. When we see people on the boards complaining of hair loss or other medical issues due to hard cuts, it is incorrect to tell then there isn't medical reasons to increase calories.

As to the 6% number, that science is based on a weak interpretation of studies from the 50s. Would suggest you review the source of that one.

OK, so you pointed out one thing here that I definitely left out of my diatribe. Nutritional needs are not to be ignored. I most certainly was not advocating VLCDs as a long-term solution, which is where the majority of those problems come from. I completely intended to mention the value of macro intake and vitamin supplementation, but I glossed over that important part. To help clarify, I am trying to advocate the creation of caloric deficit through exercise, armed with the knowledge that in the extreme ends of the spectrum, the rates of loss that are sworn by on MFP boards do not necessarily apply. Thanks for setting that straight.

Another good example is the "your problem is that you are addicted to the scale" argument. Preposterous. There is nothing wrong with weighing yourself every 5 minutes if you want to. All data is good data.

Misses out on the psychological aspect of weighing oneself all the time. Obsessing over weight can result in adherence problems. That you don't doesn't mean others don't.

I think I covered the psychology aspect, but in case I once again glossed over it too quickly: I do understand that there are psychological benefits associated with many techniques. My argument is that of mind over matter. I strongly believe that for most people, simply taking the time to understand what things mean and not letting them "scare" us will remove the psychological impact that otherwise harmless data has. People fear what they do not understand, I'm hoping to help people get over that love/hate relationship with the scale and embrace the raw data.

Your metabolism is not by default faster or slower than everyone else's. It just isn't. Your level of physical activity, your diet, your current state of and/or history of obesity, and your overall size and frame do affect your metabolism. But yours is going to be pretty much the same as someone else with the same background and stats. As with all things, there is some variation within those groups, but it's not a significant amount.

Metabolic variation exist and are significant. We are just beginning to understand this.
Suggested start ... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2581785/
Variations can be well above/below 20% estimated although LBM weight remains the largest indicator of change.

Added to my reading list, thank you. I'm not perfect by any means and I'm *always* looking for ways to increase my own knowledge. I'll start today's journey with this one.

footnote - Adaptive Thermogenesis

AT itself is not a falsehood. I already have 10 of those on my list, but AT deserves a mention on this list because it *is* a real thing that gets manipulated and otherwise falsified quite often. People will see the effects of AT and call it something else. Or, they will think that they have done irreparable damage to their bodies because of the effects of AT. Adaptive Thermogenesis is, when simplified, a reduction in overall body temperature.

Already dealt with this in an entire thread - AT has a variety of other elements which you are chosing to ignore.

Overall you have some great info but I suggest temperance in that your experience or method might not suit everyone.

I don't think I ignored them, but I did cut a lot of things out of this already massive post in an effort to save the reader's time. You did cover AT very well in that thread, and I should have included a link to it here. I was attempting to summarize and explain in a way that would make sense to the most people.

I do recognize that my method does not suit everyone, primarily for reasons that I believe to be psychological. But, I'm also honestly not trying to preach any particular method. If I could boil my entire list down to one sentence, it would be this: Educate yourself with readily available science before you buy into *any* hype, including any hype that you find in my post(s).