If you’re feeling frustrated because your diet and exercise program isn’t working for you, it could be time to say out with the old and in with the new.
Old, outdated ways of thinking could be holding you back from getting results.
Here are three of the most common fitness myths to kick to the curb, and what to do instead.
Fitness Myth Number One: You shouldn’t eat more than 1,200 calories a day.
Eating less than 1,200 calories is a great way to send your metabolism tanking, end up exhausted, have cravings go through the roof, feel like crap and end up binging or just plain giving up.
The new way of looking at your calorie intake is to view food as fuel. Eat as much as you possibly can while still losing weight. Determine how much energy your body uses at rest, factor in your activity level, then from there create a small daily calorie deficit. Aim for about a half a pound of weight loss a week.
Fitness Myth Number Two: Working out an hour a day and doing mostly cardio is the best way to lose weight.
Nope, here’s why. Very few of us have an hour a day to work out. Even if you do, cardio isn’t the best way to do it. Long duration,
steady-state cardiovascular activity teaches your body to be really good at conserving energy. It doesn’t actually burn a ton more calories.
The new way to work out is to train hard and short. Lift weights a few days a week and keep cardio intense but brief. Combine strength training with intervals and you can get great results with just three or four days a week in the gym for less than an hour.
Fitness Myth Number Three: You can’t get results from a program that isn’t punishing.
This is one of the hardest myths to break because so often we feel like if we’re not suffering the program must not be effective. If we enjoy it we must not be doing it right. Wrong! Consistent, long-term, habit change is what gets and maintains results. Anything that you can’t see yourself doing a year from now is probably not going to produce long term results.
The new way; slow, realistic, sustainable habits and behavior changes, that add up over time to alter your lifestyle. Take it slow, pick one habit at a time and start to change the way you live. Eventually you don’t have to make a decision about whether or not to workout or eat healthy, it is just part of what you do everyday. It becomes part of who you are.
You can’t change your reality with myths. It’s time to let go of the old way of thinking about diet and exercise and start embracing the new way.
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