Debunking Fat Burning Myths to Help You Lose Weight

Dieting can be hard.  You lose weight, and you gain fat right back again.  You head to Kmart and check out all the belts, sauna suits, the shakewhatever, ab torturizer, the bellyblaster tummy treadmill, and whatever else that suggest it can turn you into a stunningly, rock hard stud or studette.  It can be confusing.

Worse yet, a phalanx of experts and gurus all preach this or that way to lose weight and burn fat.  Who to believe?

Well, I am not a guru.  I am not an expert.  But I would like to talk about a few myths that I have come across and have validated with my own experience. 

You need to validate these on your own too.  Because nothing will hold you back harder nor discourage you more than thinking that a myth is a fact. 

1.  Slow, steady aerobic workouts burn fat - Without a doubt, a 45 minute run will burn calories.  The issue is whether a long, steady run is the best way to burn fat.  Your body is a remarkably, ingenius creature.  It has a way of adapting and protecting itself.  The fact is, as your body is really good at adapting to the stresses thrown at it.  In my case for over year, I ran about 4 miles, give or take a foot, 2 to 3 times a week.  I got good at running.  But as for burning fat, not so much.

Part of the reason may be that the workout is at steady, moderate high heart rate.  But how soon after the run or walk, are you breathing normal?  What's your heartbeat like 3 hours after your workout?  You expend 300 or 400 calories in that time frame, but how much calories do you continue to burn after the workout or the next day?  The answer is none.

2.  The more the you sweat, the more fat your burn - That would be a no.  You sweat in response to the increase in body heat.  The hotter your body becomes, the more you sweat to keep it cool.  But sweating the fluids out of your body is not the same as burning the fat around your gut or gluts. 

3.  Slim belts (and the like) help burn fat around targeted areas - Not so much.  Those neoprene belts, along with a plethora of like products all would have you believe that increased heat, sweating, and circulation around your gut, or hips and gluts if your wearing a neoprene shorts, will help your burn fat more.  Again, the level of sweat is not directly linked to the amount of fat you burn. 

Fat is all over your body.  It just seems like it's all down there.  Fat burning is needs to be a holistic venture.  You target not just your upper thighs or flabby lower pecs, but rather, you target your whole body.

4.  Adding muscle burns fat 24/7 - The party line is that for every pound of muscle you put on, you burn an extra 50 calories a day.  Calorie count for a pound of fat is between 3500 and 4100, depending on how you calculate bodyfat versus nutritional fat.  So, if you gained 10lbs of muscle (not undoable), you could just by virtue of having more muscle burn a pound of fat every 8 days, or 45 pounds in a year - sweet, or not.

But that 50 calories has no real basis in science.  The number is closer to 5 or 6 calories, based on the studies of Dr. Claude Bouchard, and Dr. Robert Wolfe in a separate study.  Seeking to gain 10lbs of lean muscle is a great goal for a lot of great reasons, but one of them is not for its supposed fat burning capacity.

It's important that as you actively pursue your weight loss goals that you do so with good knowledge.  There is so much misinformation out there and weight loss is such a hard activity that you can become easily discouraged.  You need not be.

Yes, it is hard, but it is also straight-forward and in some ways, simple.  Losing weight is the same as building muscle; you consume a balanced diet, exercise hard, and get lots of rest.  Don't fall for the fads or the lose 50lbs in 4 weeks snake oil, but rather, systematically lose a handful of pounds on a monthly basis.

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