Fad diets are unrealistic and not sustainable. An example of a fad diet would be eating little to no carbohydrates. Another example of a fad diet is the juice diet. This is where a person would only blend up fruit vegetables and drink it. Who wants to do that like? That would be a nightmare. Someone looking to lose weight should stay clear of these types of diets because they are unsustainable. I even think that a juice diet is unhealthy because all three macronutrients are not being consumed.
A healthy and balanced diet should consist of all three macronutrients which are protein, carbohydrates and fat. When someone is on a juice diet they are getting no protein, no fat and very little carbohydrates.A person following one of these types of diets will fall off and cheat on their diet.Most people who follow these types of diets are beginners who are overweight and looking to get a six pack overnight. That’s just not going to happen.
A good fat loss diet must be sustainable. Health and fitness should be a lifestyle but also should be enjoyable at the same time. If someone follows a simple diet that consists of clean carbohydrates, a lean source of protein and healthy fats, they will lose weight. If a person is enjoying what their eating and it’s healthy it will not be a diet, it will be a lifestyle. This is the key to a healthy body. So the next magazine your reading that tells you, you can lose 3kg in a week by following a certain diet you should know it is probably not true.
Can you spot reduce body fat? This is one of the biggest fitness misconceptions in the fitness industry. For people who are not familiar with spot reduction, it is where people try to remove body fat storage from specific areas of the body by doing an exercise to target that area. An example of this is doing lots of leg raises in order to lose that stubborn belly fat in your lower abdominals or doing hundreds of tricep pushdowns to get rid of fat at the back of my arms otherwise known as ‘bingo wings’.
If spot reduction was true wouldn’t athletes such as tennis players who practice year after year and who mainly use their dominant arm to play , have less fat in the dominant arm that they use to play then the other.
The main reason why spot reduction does not reduce fat cells in a certain area of the body is because fat cells are made up of triglycerides and muscle cells cannot directly use triglycerides as fuel. Fat must first be broken down into glycerol which will there enter the bloodstream where it can be used as fuel during exercise from anywhere in the body, not just the area been worked. Fat loss depends on people’s genetics. Some people might store more body fat in different areas of the body making it harder to come off. An example would be if two people followed the same diet and same exercise plan, person A might lose fat first in their arms and legs while person B might lose fat first in their abs and lower back. It all comes down to genetics and I’m sorry to say you can’t change your genetics.
Women who believe in this misconception will miss out on the benefits that it will have on the body and also the health benefits of weightlifting. Weightlifting will cause a woman’s body to tone rather than build. Yes, this will cause muscle tissue to increase but it will give a tight and fit look. The only way women can build huge muscles is by taking steroids to enhance their testosterone levels, but that is a totally different subject that will not be talked about right now.
On the scale your weight might go up but that is due to the increase in muscle tissue. In fact as strength and muscle tissue increases the more efficiently your body will use calories.Weightlifting in fact will help you burn a lot more fat than just doing regular cardio. When doing cardio such as walking on the treadmill or on a bike you will just burn calories while you are doing that exercise but with weight training you will not only burn calories while doing the exercise but also for a number of hours after you finished exercising. This is due to that fact that your body is using energy to repair the broken down muscle fibres.
The next thing that will be discussed is fat burners.Do they work or are they a waste of money?
When it comes to losing weight and people are finding it hard they think that there is some kind of magic pill out there that will suddenly make them ripped. Sorry to burst your bubble but there is no such pill but there is thermogenics,otherwise known as fat burners. Most fat burners contain HCA, ephedra, chitosan and pyruvate.These ingredients in the fat burners are supposed to increase the temperature in your body which is meant to boost your body’s metabolism. When your metabolism is high the speed in which your food is digested is increased leaving less time for fat storage coming from food being consumed. That fact is that some fat burners do work and some do not. People think that fat burners will make them ripped over night but the fact is that you must follow a clean diet and exercise programme to get the benefit from fat burners. Fat burners will not work if you sit around all day doing nothing and eat junk food like chocolate and pizza.
Say for example if you are doing the same exercise programme with the same amount of rep ranges and sets for months on end your body will not change because it knows what exercise you are going to do every time you train. That is the same with fat burners. The best thing you can do when taking fat burners is cycle on and off them so that your body can’t build a tolerance to them. An example would be take your fat burners for 8 weeks then take a couple of weeks off so your body goes back to normal then go back and take your fat burners if needs be. The same with training as mentioned above with cycling rep ranges and sets. An example would be if you’re doing the same exercises for 4 sets of 10 reps every time you train you may want to think about cycling between low, medium and high reps. An example of this would be week 1 do 6 sets of 4 reps, week 2 do 4 sets of 10 reps and week 3 do 4 sets of 15 reps. This way your body is constantly wondering what’s coming next.
To answer the question above fat burners do work but must be taken while following a clean and healthy diet, otherwise they are a waste of money!
Author: Dean Whelan - 4th year BB (Hons) in Recreation and Sport Management student.