Fooled by Fitness Myths

I can understand why the average person believes most fitness myths. These misconceptions generally promote an easy way to success, such as drinking cold water with lemon juice in it will help you burn fat and lose weight. Why wouldn't someone want to believe that?

And hey follow that logic, add a little lemon juice to a frosty beer and it's not really 150 calories per bottle, is it?

So it's easy to believe and pass these myths to your friends. And they make great soundbites for newspaper articles written by journalists with no scientific IQ.But what I don't understand is how any trainer can believe these myths, and worse, insist on passing them on to hundreds and thousands of clients.

Here's some junk that I read recently in another trainer's newsletter."Catabolic foods burn up more calories than they supply. Catabolic foods are the opposite of Anabolic foods. For example a medium sized apple (which is catabolic), would provide an average of 85 calories, however your metabolism would require an additional 99 more calories to metabolize it. To help maintain your weight it is helpful to eat a minimum of ten servings of catabolic foods each day. "

Okay, so if I do the math correctly...then if I eat 10 apples per day, I would actually have a net loss of 140 calories?Someone better tell the sports nutritionists about this before they recommend an apple as a good post-exercise carbohydrate source.By using this "catabolic food" logic, I would starve to death if all I had to eat was apples or other catabolic foods.

Now don't get me wrong, these trainers are recommending the right foods (fruits and vegetables), but calling any food "catabolic foods" or a "negative calorie" food is just plain wrong.

But I guess it sounds much more "exciting" and sells more books.

Another classic myth...

"A pound of muscle burns an extra 50 calories per day."

When you do the math for someone that puts on say, 20 lbs of muscle, you realize there is no way that their metabolism is going to go up 1000 calories (20lbs x 50 calories).That would make it very difficult to maintain muscle mass.

In addition, look at any physiology textbook and it will tell you that about 70% of a human's total energy expenditure is due to the processes within the organs of the body.

Charts from these texts break it down even more:

Your brain uses 20% of that energy.

Your liver uses around 25% of that energy.

And your muscles around 18% of that energy.

So your muscles use about 20% of the total energy in your metabolic rate.

Now let's say that your body is about 40% muscle. So in a 200 pound guy, he would have 80 pounds of muscle.

If each pound of muscle burned 50 calories...

He should have a metabolic rate of 2000 calories from muscle alone! And according to our figures above, that would only be around 15-20% of his total metabolic rate contribution.

So his total metabolic rate would be around 10,000 calories. If a pound of muscle burned 50 calories per day.

The bottom line: Simply adding a pound of muscle does not automatically increase your metabolic rate by 50 calories.

Like the catabolic food claim, it sounds good when you are talking about 1 pound of muscle, or 1 apple having the effect, but when you do the numbers...it's clear that it cannot be true.

Of course, I'm not saying that building muscle is worthless - it is essential for health and looking good, but I've watched too many people justify eating "treats" and extra calories because of their gains in muscle (and supposed massive gain in metabolism).

Just realize 1 pound of muscle is not a magic bullet for boosting metabolism - it's really the work that it takes to get their that will have much more benefit!

Don't believe everything you read,

CB

P.S. The basics work.You can believe that.

And that is what Turbulence Training is...the basics put together in a way that will save you the most time and get you the most results.

But the package isn't basic. No way. In fact, I've put together a great package for you over at www.turbulencetraining.com, but the deal ends tonite at midnight.