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6 Weight-Loss Tips We All Know, That Just Arent So

By Germaine Gibson

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 14Mar2012 Word count: 1586 Viewed: 42 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Here are 6 weight loss 'facts' we all know. The only small challenge is...they aren't true, and will not help in weight loss or anything else.

1) Breakfast:-
-a must have meal- for the metabolism and, it's important in setting your enegry up for the day. It's how you break the night's fast.

So Two Myths in one:

a) When we worked hard for 16 hours a day on a farm or a mine or the mill or factory, a big breakfast was important because it could be many hours before you could eat another meal.

Today that just isn't the case. Many of us get out of bed, drive or ride to our job, and sit in front of a computer all day.

It doesn't mean we don't do physical labor at all, but for the vast majority it's not the same intensity and duration as it used to be 200 years ago.

We (most of us) don't need a lot of calories before starting our day.

That's not to say that you shouldn't eat something in the morning.

And that's not to say you shouldn't drink some liquid first thing in the morning (preferable non-alcoholic of course!)

Ideally, some water, some exercise before you start your day. Ideally - at least drink some juice or water.

But it doesn't have to be breakfast at 6 a.m (sorry McDonalds).

Breakfast should beaten - but on a commonsense schedule. Your schedule for your day

It can be a break at work at 10 a.m.

If you're the type who is hungry when you wake up, eat breakfast.

If the last thing you want is to eat breakfast when you first get up - don't, have some liquid - but then eat something within the first few hours of your day.

b) As for jump-starting your metabolism, that comes from the dietary concept known as the Thermic Effect of Food.

Simply stated, it costs calories to digest and absorb food. But you can't create a negative balance. In other words, you can't burn more than you eat.

There are no data to suggest that you'll burn more calories over the course of the day by eating breakfast.

So don't eat just because you think you'll burn calories--it would be better for you to workout, which will actually burn calories, and then eat something later in the morning.

2) Iceberg lettuce has zero nutrition.

Iceberg lettuce is the most popular form of lettuce we eat (in the West). We eat it in salads and on burgers and sandwiches. It's mostly white, has a great crunch when cold, and most people believe it has no nutritional value (me included ).

But it's not exactly true. In a two-cup serving of chopped lettuce, about what someone would eat in a typical salad, there are:

Almost 2 grams of dietary fiber Vitamin A--361 IU, mostly beta carotene and lutein Folate--41.8 mcg Calcium--26 mg Magnesium--10.0 mg Phosphorus--28.8 mg Potassium--204 mg Most surprising, it has 75 mg of omega-3 fatty acids!

While the nutrient content isn't the best profile in the entire vegetable world, it's not zero.

Ref: How to stay healthy without Killing Yourself

Of course, you can do better: red leaf lettuce has the best nutrient profile, followed by romaine.

But in a society that averages less than three vegetables per day, iceberg lettuce is not to be scorned.

3) Sugar = empty calories.

Sugar is the Devil.

It's not the sugar - its the quantity we absorb in this day and age

There's no question humans have a sweet tooth. We seem to love everything sweet from candy to cookies to cake to soft drinks and on and on. If you feed sugar (and fat) to laboratory rats, they would rather starve than go back to their old rat chow.

Sugar is not empty calories--sugar is pure energy.

Your brain uses glucose almost exclusively, and your muscles would rather use glucose than fat when you exercise. The reason is that metabolically, glucose burns up completely. The only substances left after your body produces energy with glucose are water and carbon dioxide. That's it. Your body doesn't care what the source is--whether it's white sugar or a starch that's broken down into glucose. It treats them both the same when it comes to producing energy.

It's true that you get better nutrients from eating whole grains, vegetables, and fruit than you get from sugar. But your body doesn't care where you get energy.

The PROBLEM is the amount of sugar you take in—so if in doubt - don't have sugar added - its so prevalent in all our processed foods anyway

And we all have such a sweet tooth

4) Walking is a great exercise because it burns more fat than running.

Walking is a great exercise, but…

This probably has something to do with what kind of fuel we use while exercising.

The muscles prefer glucose (sugar) as a fuel because it can burn it more efficiently than other fuels.

The harder you exercise, the more your body relies on sugar.

If you exercise slowly or less strenuously, the body shifts to burning more fat as a fuel. That's the basis for fat-burning exercise: exercise slower and your body uses fat as a fuel.

However you'd have to invest so much more time in exercising slowly than if you go fast to make that all work out

It doesn't mean that walking isn't efficient and a great way to exercise--it is, but you'll have to spend more time doing it than you will running or taking a spinning class.

TIP: it doesn't really matter what type of fuel you use when you exercise because as long as you don't overeat, you'll burn up body fat when you run out of glucose. It may be hours later, but you will burn up the fat and that's a fact.

5) Always eat several small meals rather than one or two large meals .

This has more to do with our environment and lack of physical activity than nutrition. Most of us aren't really physically active. We drive to work, sit in meetings, talk on the phone, or sit in front of a computer all day; many factory workers sit as they work. Even a more physical job such as driving a truck may include lots of sitting. Then we drive home and sit in front of the television or the computer until it's time for bed. Under those circumstances, several small meals to sustain blood sugar may be better than a single large meal at the beginning or end of the day.

Does it matter to the body? Not really, because our bodies can adapt to whatever we do on a regular basis. When it comes to attaining a normal body weight, it still comes down to calories: eat more than you need, whether in several small meals or one huge one, and you're going to gain weight. Eat less with either pattern of eating, and you'll lose weight.

Consider what works best for you to sustain your energy levels throughout the day, and that's what you should do.

TIP - take time to your eating pattern that works for your body, and your life.

6) If you want to be fat - eat late at night.

Whenever you eat, some calories are used to pay for cost of digesting and absorbing food; others are immediately used for energy.

Even if you're sleeping, your brain is still hard at work, so is your heart. And they both need energy. But you will temporarily store some of the calories as carbohydrate in the form of glycogen and some as fat. And then depending on how much you are eating (Quantity is the key here) and when you eat again depends on how much of the fat and glycogen is used up.

If you eat when hungry and never to excess, it doesn't matter when you eat.

It always matters what you eat, and how much.

What is true is that most overweight people eat most of their calories after 4 p.m.--but the problem's not so much the time of day as the quantity they eat. When you're tired and your resistance is low, it's much harder to exert control.

The bottom line is this: a calorie is a calorie. It really doesn't matter when you eat it. Eat too many and you gain weight. Eat too few and you lose weight.

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