Read 136 times since Wednesday, July 28, 2010
If you're looking to lose weight and have started at any one of the many gyms in the UK, it's important that you are also aware of how vital your diet is to your weight loss program and whilst there is a lot to learn, these four misconceptions should first help put you mind at rest.
1. Carbohydrates are bad for you - the one diet that everyone around the world will have heard of is the Atkins diet, which is a way of eating that considerably restricts the amount of carbohydrates that you can eat.
Whilst most people took this to assume that carbs were therefore bad for you, this simply isn't the case.
Carbs are the type of food that give your body energy, whilst also helping to retain parts of other foods, such as fats and proteins, for use at a later date.
Therefore, if you eat too many carbs - and don't work them off through exercising - they will be stored in your body, taking and storing parts from other food types, which in turn will increase your weight.
Carbohydrates aren't bad for you; you've just got to be careful how many you consume.
2. Three meals a day is all you should eat - when you were younger, you will have often been told by your parents that snacking between meals wasn't good as you would not eat your lunch or dinner.
This has led some people to believe that snacking between meals should be avoided, as they will end up relying on snacks rather than proper, healthy meals.
The problem with this misconception is that it is partly true, in the way that you shouldn't be snacking extensively between meals.
However, what it doesn't say is that a small, healthy snack - such as carrot sticks and humus or a piece of fruit - is actually good for you, as it keeps your metabolic rate high, which means food is digested quicker so it has less time to be stored as fat by your body.
3. You shouldn't drink whilst eating - this was a common misconception several years ago as some people believed that by drinking any type of fluid when you were eating had an adverse effect on the enzymes and fluids in your digestive system, in effect diluting them so that they didn't work as quickly, which in turn meant a slower digestive process.
After extensive research, however, this was proved to be false and the truth is that some experts actually recommend you drink with your meals, as by drinking water - and just water, not fizzy drinks - you'll feel fuller for longer, which in turn means you'll be less tempted to eat considerably or unhealthily between meals.
4. Eliminating a food group is the way forward - as mentioned above, the Atkins diet saw people practically remove carbohydrates from their diets completely, in hope of instant and long term weight loss.
As a result of this diet, people looked into the possibility of dropping other food groups from their eating habits instead, which led to a vast array of different fad diets that saw people not eating fats or proteins.
Simply put, to lose weight and to maintain this weight loss, you need to eat a balanced diet that mixes all of the food groups together - even fats. For more information about gym accessories, visit the Fitness First web shop at http://www.fitnessfirstshop.co.uk/.
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