Trending Exercise Myths - DEBUNKED

Trending Exercise Myths Debunked

A couple weeks back I read a Dietitian’s blog from Huffington Post called “The Eight Nutrition Trends that Drive This Dietitian Crazy”. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/abby-langer/nutrition-trends_b_5353692.html. If you have a chance it’s a fun read!

With a healthy dose of humour and science, she pretty much covered all my current Nutrition pet peeves and did it so well; it inspired me to blog about my own pet peeves, but since all my Dietitian ones were effectively covered, I decided to focus this blog on my Personal training experience and debunk some of the trending Exercise myths, once and for all!

But I don’t wanna BULK UP…

You WONT!!! As a trainer and avid crossfitter, I can’t tell you how many times I hear this phrase from clients and fellow Gymees, mainly of the female kind. I can relate as I AM one of those girls that builds muscle easily, but from my experience, this is surprisingly rare. Stop using this as an excuse to lift lighter weight, or work less hard because essentially this is all you’re doing! Truth be told, the average woman has relatively low levels of testosterone, especially compared to their male counterparts, and this makes it very difficult for women to build muscle. Hence bulking up is not only unlikely, but actually kinda hard. Most women have the opposite challenge, which is building strength and desired lean muscle mass. And while I’m on that topic, may I remind all those women out there that muscle burns FAT. Studies show that the best way for women to lose body fat is via intense strength training, NOT long duration cardio activities because building muscle means you’re more metabolic at rest. FOOD for THOUGHT…1 lb of muscle burns as much as 3 times that of 1lb of fat. So go ahead and try to bulk up, you might not have much luck THAT, but you might lose inches and be less jiggly…who wants that though, right?!