9 Weight Loss Myths That We Should Stop Believing

Every new year brings a new set of goals. For most people, their first goal may be to lose the weight that they have gained over the holiday season.

While the internet is a great resource for weight loss information, there’s also plenty of misinformation that can confuse you or complicate your situation.

Knowing fact from fiction is essential to helping you optimize your weight loss program and to expedite your results.

Here are some weight loss myths that could be impeding your progress.

Myth 1: The Weight Loss Snowball Effect

One common misconception suggests that once you start losing weight, you’ll continue to do so.

However, most people experience a significant loss of weight once they make significant lifestyle changes.

As you get closer to your weight goal, you may find it more difficult to lose weight.

This is because your body eventually plateaus after a certain amount of physical activity. It’s important to scale with the new requirements of your body.

As you lose weight, you also become stronger, and you’ll need a greater level of stimulation to trigger the fat-burning process.

This is why your workouts should periodically increase in difficulty and intensity.

Myth 2: Genetics Don’t Play a Role in Obesity

While obesity is often the result of poor lifestyle choices, it’s not fair to completely disregard genetics as a contributing factor.

This doesn’t mean that some people are predisposed to become obese, but rather that some people are more at risk of becoming obese than others.

Your lifestyle choices will still be your primary determinant of your level of health.

Myth 3: Fad Diets

While fad diets may generate results, the truth is that these results aren’t sustainable, as they are unbalanced and unhealthy.

A sustained fad diet will create nutritional imbalances that could affect your quality of life.

While results may initially be impressive and easy to attain, discontinuing the fad diets will cause your body to regress to its previous unhealthy state.

This also means that the discontinuation of a fad diet is more of an eventuality than a possibility.

It’s important to strike a balance between what you feed your body and how you strengthen your body.

A healthy, balanced diet and regular exercise will get you real results and will drastically improve your quality of life.

Myth 4: It’s Okay to Overeat Healthy Food

The main requirement for your body to begin losing weight is for it to enter into a caloric deficit, which essentially means that you have to eat less than your daily caloric requirements.

Even low carb foods will accumulate if eaten in excess.

This is why it’s important to eat food that’s not only healthy, but also filling. This red beans and rice recipe instant pot is a good example of food that’s healthy and filling.

Weight loss, and health in general, are all a matter of striking a healthy balance.

Myth 5: Losing Small Amounts Of Weight Will Add Up Over Time

The difficulty in losing weight is that small changes simply won’t have a significant effect on your body, even over the long term.

The reason behind this is that the body can quickly adapt to small changes, so walking an extra mile a day isn’t going to create the stimulation needed to trigger your body’s fat burning mechanism.

Myth 6: Gluten-Free Foods Are Perfect For Weight Loss

The hype surrounding gluten-free food is misplaced because of the misconception that gluten-free food will help you reduce your caloric consumption.

The true purpose of gluten-free food is to provide food choices to people who are allergic to gluten. They are not meant as a measure to reduce your caloric intake.

Myth 7: Skipping Breakfast Helps With Weight Loss

Another common misconception is that you can further reduce your caloric intake by skipping breakfast.

While that may be true in the morning, most people tend to compensate for their missed meal during the rest of the day, which often means that they end up with the same amount of calories, or even more.

Skipping breakfast also leaves them weakened in the morning, which directly hurts productivity as well as physical activity levels.

Fasting will aid in weight loss, but it isn’t optimal if it significantly affects your level of activity. Losing weight isn’t just about eating less, but it is also about moving more.

A balance between these two facets must be struck in order to achieve optimal weight loss.

Myth 8: Weight Loss Supplements Are Enough

While weight loss supplements do help people lose weight, it’s important to identify the manner in which they achieve weight loss.

Some of these products merely get rid of your water weight, thus creating the illusion that you’re getting healthier.

Moreover, there are many of these supplements that contain active ingredients that will do more harm than good over time.

If you really must use weight loss supplements, we recommend using milder fat burners, coupled with regular and progressive exercise.

As is clear with the name, these supplements are merely meant to support your weight loss, and they aren’t meant to serve as the main catalyst.

Myth 9: Snacking is a Sin

Many people believe that snacking is something that should be strictly avoided if you’re on a diet because of the outright addition to calories.

The pitfall of this way of thinking is the same as with skipping breakfast. Those who skip snacks tend to compensate for it in other meals. Snacking is more a matter of what you eat than if you eat.

Snacking is an effective way to manage your caloric intake, especially when you stick to healthy foods such as fruits and low-fat yogurts.

This helps reduce your food cravings and will tide you over to your next meal, without substantially increasing your caloric intake.

Final Thought

Undergoing weight loss should not be viewed as a punishment for making poor health-related choices.

It should be approached as a balancing act that’s meant to improve your quality of life. Losing weight is a long-term commitment that should be founded on science and fact-checked information.