Weight loss myths busted

25 Apr 2011 Leave a Comment

by littlenursey in This has nothing to do with nursing... Tags: body wrap, exercise, gym, student nurse, vegetarian, weight, weight loss, weight loss myth

I hate health myths, or health facts that have been overblown and given too much credit. Weight loss ones especially, and the ones about alcohol and sex. I loved learning about and working in public health during my nurse training – when I qualify I’d love to work in sexual health. It’s something I have been interested in for a long time. Probably because I’m slightly (or very as my boyfriend and friends tell me) perverted and with that, have learned way too much about the subject and the myths around it.
Weight loss is just something that has always interested me, partly because I have some obese family members and because it amazes me how many people fall for it when the big companies cash in with their false weight loss products.
Alcohol is a bit of a new one for me – I have never been a big drinker, and with what I have seen and learned about alcohol, I drink less and less.

For this post, I will focus on weight loss myths, as I feel there are a lot of myths on each of the public health subjects and writing about them all in one post would be insane.
So here are some weight loss myths busted for you. Feel free to comment!

1. Myth – Joining the gym will make you lose weight
   Answer – Exercise alone won’t make you lose weight:
   Every New Year people make a resolution to lose weight. They go on a diet, which mainly means they stop eating takeaways for a few weeks, cut down on chocolate and biscuits, still drink as much alcohol as usual at the weekend, and then give up the diet after a few weeks. They join the gym, and after a month of going 3 or 4 times a week they wonder to themselves, “Why am I not losing weight?!”
   The math is quite simple – research reports that 1 pound of fat contains roughly around 3,500 calories. To burn 3,500 calories, it is estimated that we would need to run for around 6-7hrs none stop at a steady pace (obviously this varies person to person). This is highly unrealistic, especially when it is recommended that a typical male adult consumes up to  2550 calories per day (this also varies person to person). If someone is to continue eating and drinking badly and going to the gym without a real idea on how many calories they are burning, they probably won’t lose weight, or if they do, it will be very slowly. This is very common, particularly in people who do not follow a personal training programme when using cardio machinery and do not use their potential effectively when exercising.
   This can also apply to people who go running a few times a week – athletes who run are slim, but they also eat well and run a heck of a lot more. Good diet goes hand in hand with exercise when it comes to weight loss – but diet is the most important factor. You have to reverse the way you got overweight in the first place.
2. Myth – Diet pills help you lose weight
   Answer – No, they don’t:
   I’ll keep this one short and simple – companies target desperate people who are overweight by producing diet pills and advertising them with a load of ridiculous lies. They charge a lot of money. There is absolutely nothing in diet pills that can make your body magically get rid of fat. Your body does not work like that and neither do fat cells. This is why diet pills come with a label on the bottle that says “Best effective when taken with a well-balanced diet” or something similar. If anyone loses weight while taking diet pills, it’s probably because they are on a well-balanced diet. I despise companies who sell diet pills.
   Take a look at this absolutely ridiculous website selling the popular weight loss supplement Acai Berry: http://www.fitness2k.com/acai-berry-diet-pills
   The website displays a fooling image of a woman dressed as an attractive doctor and has a poorly written description which goes as far as claiming that the pills have ‘absolutely no side effects at all’, and that they ‘promise instant weight loss’. Sickening.
   On the other hand, drugs like Alli are proven to work – but clients must be prescribed this drug and it does not claim to work the same way as bogus diet pills such as Acai Berry.
3. Myth – Being a vegetarian will help you lose weight
   Answer – Only if you actually eat vegetables:
   Lots of celebrities go on these crazy fad diets where they eat nothing but strawberries, tomato soup or raw vegetables, and lots of people follow this. This is extremely unhealthy and you will lack a huge amount of nutrients needed in your diet. Lots of vegetarians also believe that they have a healthier diet than meat eaters.
   Lots of vegetarians also like to eat a lot of cheese, chips, white rice, omelettes containing too many eggs and greasy/fried vegetable dishes. A lot of vegetarians can struggle to find food they enjoy at first and can get a little lost.
   If you decide to become a vegetarian for health reasons, give your diet the health benefits of fruit and vegetables.
   If you decide to become a vegetarian because you are against eating animals, but for some reason still find it acceptable to eat fish and shellfish (no offence), remember how much salt is in seafood – don’t go mad with it.
4. Myth – Doing sit ups/stomach crunches will make you lose belly fat
   Answer – You can’t target areas of fat:
   You can do all the sit ups you want today- that layer of fat on your belly won’t go anywhere, but the hidden sheet of muscle underneath will be lovely and muscly!
   To lose belly fat (and other areas of fat for that matter such as thigh, chin and bum fat) you must do regualr cardio exercise (running, swimming, anything that’s a full body workout and gets your heart pumping), diet properly AND do your toning exercises such as crunches and sit ups. But losing belly fat is hard work – it can be stubborn and can take lots of training for months.
5. Myth – Wrapping yourself in cling film or seaweed will make you lose inches of fat
   Answer – Absolute nonsense:
   Yet again another way of spas targeting desperate people and claiming that paying a lot of money to suffocate your skin by smothering it in slime and then wrapping it in clingfilm will make you magically lose inches of fat. There is absolutely no scientific evidence to support this. It will make you sweat, which many people say helps by making you ‘lose water’. This is called dehydration – not a good thing. The therepeutic effects of a body wrap may be enjoyable – they claim to be relaxing and to draw toxins out of the skin – but that’s as far as it goes in terms of benefits. Once again, weight loss does not work like this and fat cells don’t just ‘leak’ out of the skin or shrink when wrapped in slimy cling film. Many customers claim to lose inches after treatment when infact they haven’t – the placebo effect is very common when you spend a lot of money hoping it will make you lose weight.

Weight loss has been made far too complicated by the media and unreliable sources. It’s actually very simple – a good diet, regular exercise, everything in moderation and cut down on the alcohol. However if you are overweight and struggling, a visit to your GP for some advice won’t do any harm.
Click on the image below for some simplified diet advice from the Food Standards Agency: