1. Low-fat and/or fat free means it’s better for you. Years ago, when the low fat trends emerged; food companies took fat away from their products and then labeled them as “health foods”. Since fat has the property to make food flavorful, they replaced it with sugar to make their products taste better! While the fat present in whole foods is not harmful, added sugars in processed foods is not good for your health!
2. A calorie is a calorie, they are created equal. Wrong! Different foods go through different metabolic pathways in the body, therefore, eating 100 calories of junk food snack packs are not the same as 100 calories of nuts, seeds, vegetable or lean protein. They have a different effect on hunger, hormones and overall health. Remember not all foods are created equal, instead of paying attention to the calorie count, we need to focus on the quality of our food.
3. Losing weight is all about will power. Even though the right mindset is needed to reach any goal in life (not just weight loss); the human body is a complex system of hormones, genes, and cells that have a huge impact on our body weight. We need to consider permanent lifestyle changes such as a healthy diet, regular exercise, regular sleep and stress management in order to be successful at maintaining a healthy weight or keeping the off.
4. Eating healthy food is more expensive. Half of this statement is true. Junk food is very cheap to produce, highly addictive and widely available to the consumer. But if you add up all of the money spent on fast food, frozen packaged processed food, or restaurant consumption; it ends up being more than what you would spend filling up your cart with fresh produce, lean meats and whole grains. The challenge is planning and preparing our meals. Our busy lifestyles do not prioritize such actions. Therefore we end up paying a little more for convenience, but instead we should be focusing on investing towards our health.
5. If I do more cardio, I’ll lose more weight. It is very clear that exercise is needed for overall health. But when you are trying to lose weight, it’s not an option, it’s absolutely necessary. If you don’t exercise at all while restricting calories, you’re likely to lose more muscle mass and experience a decrease in metabolic rate, which means a higher chance to regain weight. When you are exerting your muscles through weight lifting or resistance training plus moderate cardio, you optimize and preserve lean muscle mass, experiencing the major benefits of weight loss and maintenance.
