Lie #1: Slimmer people are healthy, overweight people aren’t.

Someone’s look is not an accurate indicator of how healthy he or she is. It’s not unusual for a slim person to be a couch potato or a chain smoker or even both. And on the other part of the weight spectrum, it’s entirely possible for someone who could be labeled as “overweight” or having a high body mass index to train consistently, consume lots of clean foods, like lean meats, fruits or vegetables and generally follow healthy lifestyle habits.

Lie #2: You have to drink at least 8 glasses of water daily.

This is simply not true, at least concerning the amount of water. Yes, you should be drinking a lot of water during the day, and you will most definitely be healthier and slimmer if you drink water instead of beverages high in processed sugar such as juice, soda, and many other sweet drinks. However, everyone has a different needs for hydration, and the 8 glasses of water isn’t a quantity that is based on any real research. The most general recommendation about being properly hydrated is this: drink enough water during the day so that the color of your urine is pale yellow to white. The general rule is the darker your urine is, the more dehydrated you are.

Lie #3: Natural foods are healthy, while those filled with chemicals are bad.

Most of the words that we’ve grown accustomed to hearing are bad for you, are mainly buzzwords, which everyone keeps repeating without delving a bit deeper into the subject. Cyanide, for example, can be found in nature, and when you think about it water is also a chemical. So, if you are trying to eat healthy, you should focus on consuming larger amounts of fruits and vegetables, especially the ones which haven’t been treated with pesticides, as well as many other whole products. The less processed a food product, the more likely it is to be healthy since you are consuming more nutrients per calories. However, eating a processed food every now and then can be totally fine and would supplement an already balanced diet.

Lie #4: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

The actual research on this topic has been mixed. A much better mindset to have when deciding whether to have breakfast is asking yourself if you’re really hungry at that moment. If you don’t feel like eating in the morning, then don’t force yourself when you’re not feeling like it. If you do feel hunger, then by all means, eat away, and if you choose to eat something healthy, with a balanced ratio of protein, healthy fats, carbs and fiber, then all the better.

Lie #5: You can target specific body parts for fat loss, like losing fat around the stomach by doing crunches.

Many people have tried this, but alas, that’s not how our body works. Training specific muscles can make them bigger and stronger, however, doing hundreds of crunches is not going to do anything to the fat surrounding your midsection. The same goes for doing lunges and your thighs, and dips and your upper arms.

The same rule applies for many exercises. The reason for this is quite simple: muscle cannot be turned into fat: it grows in size and becomes stronger beneath whatever amount of fat you have. Plus, you can’t do exercises that target specific areas of fat on your body. It all boils down to the fact that if you’re trying to lose fat in a specific area, you will need to decrease your total body fat percentage with a strict diet and fitness regimen.

Lie #6: You should not be training if you’re pregnant.

On the contrary, it actually very healthy and highly recommended for pregnant women to train regularly during their pregnancies, provided that they are not pushing themselves harder than they did when they weren’t pregnant.

Lie #7: Taking minerals, vitamins and all kinds of supplements will make you healthier.

Research has been piling up evidence that there is no need to take that many vitamins and supplements as the supplement companies and the pharmaceutical industry would have you believe. Your body needs vitamins and minerals, but if you are already eating a well-balanced diet, it’s very likely you already get all the essential things your body needs from the food you’re eating.

Lie #8: Doing lots of cardio (in any form) is the best way to lose the excess weight.

Metabolic resistance training has been repeatedly shown to be a far superior method of burning fat than jogging or running on a treadmill for hours on end. Metabolic resistance training is basically the same thing you do when doing classic weightlifting movements such as deadlifts, squats, overhead presses etc, only this time you’re doing them very quickly and at a near-maximal effort and with very little rest between sets. The way you accommodate for the fast pace is by switching up the movements between the big muscle groups so that one part of the body can temporarily rest while the other part is being trained.

This type of training is incredibly hard and intense if done properly, however, it also has to last only 25-30 minutes, maybe even less, instead of the standard 45-60 minutes that you would normally spend running on the treadmill. And there’s another thing: if you start running on the treadmill in a steady state, the body will return to its normal metabolic rate in a couple of hours. This means that you will go back to burning the average amount of calories that you normally do. However, if you do metabolic resistance training, the post-training effect will last much longer, around 24-48 hours after you stop training.

Lie #9: Detox diets will cleanse your body of all toxins

Not true. That’s what you have your kidneys and liver for. You can read a lot on the Internet about what doing a juice cleanse does to the body and decide whether you want to try it out. When it comes to doing detox diets which involve eating actual food, you may be forced to eat more vegetables and fruits and more whole foods in general than you’d normally do, but you will still not be ridding your system of enough toxins. The only thing you’ll do is just eat a lot more veggies and fruits. And not many calories for that matter, depending on the type of diet.

Lie #10: Foods low in fat are better than those that have lots of it.

Many food products that have a low amount of fat are actually loaded with carbs and contain refined sugars added in them to make them taste better because the taste mainly comes from the high-fat content in their usual forms. Additionally, research has shown that fat, apart from trans-fat is not as dangerous as it was thought before. As long as you are not consuming too much, a little fat in your diet can be quite beneficial.

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