In our crazy strive to look great and get the body of our dreams we often get blindsided by quick fixes, diet swaps, and just a lot of fake tips and tricks that promise instant results. Navigating the world of proper nutrition that will help with weight loss is not easy these days. There’s a lot of information and it’s hard to tell fact from fiction. To make your life a bit easier we’ve compiled a list of 7 surprising diet myths, so you won’t have to waste your time on them in the future.
1. Eating Less – Lose More
The basic idea is to create a caloric deficit, so that you will lose some weight. But there is a line you shouldn’t cross. You should never just skip meals or starve yourself. The truth is, your body needs a certain amount of calories just to function. You know, walking, breathing, your heart working – all of this takes energy and you need to have enough. So do yourself a favor, use a calorie calculator and find out how much calories do you need based on your age, height and weight to maintain the weight you are now and then go from there. And remember if you go too low in calories that will just slow down your metabolism, and losing weight will become even harder.
2.Eating 5 meals a day will boost your metabolism.
It might at first, but overtime you’ll just exhaust your digestive system because it will be working non-stop. Some also argue that eating small meals throughout the day means you’ll never have the time to fully digest your food and therefore you won’t be getting all the nutrients you could. Basically there’s no actual proof that eating small meals throughout a day instead of three main meals will make you lose weight. It’s just a matter of personal preference.
3. Exercising means you can eat whatever you want.
A lot of people believe that if they do like half an hour of exercising or do a little jog now and then they’re going to lose massive amounts of weight not matter what they eat. That is simply not true. Exercising is important for growing and maintaining your muscles and making your strong and lean in the long run. But unless you’re an actual athlete that trains heavily every day, you won’t be burning enough calories to eat whatever you like. Diet always comes first. Weight loss is 80% healthy diet and only 20% exercise.
4. Cutting dairy will help with weight loss.
Sure, if you eat cheesecake or a block of cheese every day cutting it out will help. Otherwise – not so much. People assume that dairy products are high in fat and therefore cutting them will help them shed those pounds. In reality milk, yoghurt and cottage cheese can actually help you lose weight.
5. Eating after 8 p.m. makes you gain weight.
There’s absolutely no proof of that. The time of day you eat at has no effect on your weight. It all depends on your personal preference, your schedule and your bedtime. As long as you get the right amount of calories you’ll be fine. But it is recommended that you have dinner at least 3 hours before you go to bed so that your body has enough time to digest food before you fall asleep, which in turn will make you sleep better, since your body will be resting and not working hard to digest dinner.
6. Diet foods help you lose weight.
It might’ve been like that at first, but these days the label “diet” just means it’s low-fat. But in most cases, food manufacturers add a ton of sugar or sodium to make diet foods taste good. And sugar and sodium are way worse for your body than a little bit of fat. Another problem with diet foods is that not only are they low in calories, they’re also low in nutrients. So next time you want to buy something “diet” read the label and think whether it’s worth it.
7. Drinking a lot of water will make you lose weight.
Drinking enough water is certainly important and it can miracles for your skin and how you feel, but it won’t actually make you lose weight. You might lose a couple of pounds of water weight simply because your body will get used to being hydrated and therefore won’t cling on to water, but that’s about it. However, it’s a good idea to drink water throughout the day, because a lot of the time we mistake being thirsty for being hungry. So in that way it’ll prevent you from eating more than you should or actually want.