So, this week, I’m back with few more myths that we’ve heard of lately in order to scale back weight or build muscle. Let’s go through few of them:
MYTH: Performing abdominal exercises will offer you a flat stomach.
TRUTH: Is it true? The very fact is this — to get a flat tummy is akin to stripping away the fat round the midsection/abdominal region of your body. This will be accomplished by doing cardio/aerobic exercises (to burn calories), strength training (to increase metabolism) and following a correct and nutritious diet. Weight training and abdominal workout will assist you in creating proper muscle mass in your mid-section, but you won’t see the muscle definition unless the fat in this area is stripped away. So if you would like to strip off fat from the body, reduce your consumption of junk, fried food and transfat, and transform your lifestyle into a healthier one.
MYTH: You will require supplements to create muscle.
TRUTH: This is another myth that’s often applicable to only a few people. Supplements do help, but mainly for bodybuilders or strength trainers. Others who do some weight training two or three times every week, just to remain fit and build a tough muscle mass, need not have bottles of creatine or protein shakes to create muscle. It’s true that you simply need a touch more protein than normal once you want to create muscle size and strength. But you’ll easily get that protein from your food (for vegetarians too). In
other words, supplements are unnecessary. In fact, the protein in the supplements are derived from milk or soy anyway. So, what exactly are you doing? — just paying to a supplement manufacturer to extract the protein from food and sell it back to you.
If you’re a significant bodybuilder and doing weight training for hours every day, the principles could be different for you. But, for a regular person, all the additional supplements that he/she will add to their diet aren’t likely to do much good. Because even healthy food, if consumed in large quantities, does harm to your body. So moderation always works!
(The writer is Chief Nutrition Officer, Luke Coutinho Holistic Healing Systems. She is aclinical nutritionist with a focus on healthy lifestyle choices.)