How You Will Effectively Screw Over Your Health and Fitness Goals

Anonymous

The health and fitness industry is plagued with people simply trying to make a buck off of your bad health. They use flash, they use buzz words, they get you to buy useless equiptment that ends up in your yearly yard sale, and they continue to do this because we aren't spending enough time to not only educate ourselves on actual good healthy diets and weight loss programs, but we often don't dig any deeper into those we are following, or the books we're reading, or those little side bar click bait things we click on and think we've found the quick solution to all our problems. To help you avoid some of the pitfalls and effectively screwing over any long term health and fitness goals you may have, here are some of the major things to avoid on your quest to getting healthy if you want long term success.


How You Will Effectively Screw Over Your Health and Fitness Goals


1. QUICK, FAST, SUPER EASY, YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO (FILLER) TO REACH YOUR GOALS!


Man or woman does not gain an extra 20, 30, 50, or 100+ pounds in a weeks time, so what makes you think you can now magically lose it in that time or some other ridiculously short period of time relative to your actual weight loss goals. Weight loss requires you to put in both time AND work to get it done so that you aren't gaining it back soon after you lose it. These buzz words you get into that draw you in to ads and commercials will not help you on your quest especially those stating that you don't have to exercise or you don't have to eat right to reach your goals. Guess what, if you're starving yourself b/c you don't want to exercise, you're just as unhealthy as you are being overweight and you're going to not only jeopardize your health but ruin your metabolism. If you're exercising all hours and just downing calories left and right, you are never going to see those great end results you're imagining and are probably going to end up injured, exhausted, and overtrained as opposed to finding a healthy balance between your diet and exercise plan. Your body is like any major test or paper you've had to write in your life. You will never understand it or know what's happening with it if you are just constantly guessing and not educating yourself on what you need to know about it. Do some research, because when you're just relying on some alleged super quick and easy scheme, you're basically saying you want to both take and fail the same test over and over again, and that's not fun for anyone.


How You Will Effectively Screw Over Your Health and Fitness Goals


2. Ladies, all you need is a few 3lb weights and a ton of cardio


Stop it with the insane cardio and toss those baby weights! This is one area where women in particular fall victim. Ladies you are not men. I feel I have to say this because for some reason, you tend to believe that if you lift a weight heavier then 1-3lbs, you will all of a sudden bulk up and turn into the Hulk. When you pick up a weight, your arm shouldn't be able to spring up as if it were nothing. Think about this...your pet, a toddler, a heavy book bag, your luggage, a full grocery bag...all these things you've been lifting and hauling around your whole life weigh much more than 1-3lbs, and yet you don't look like you're roiding out nor are you struggling to lift them! The reason men bulk up the way they do is that women have much much much lower levels of testosterone then men do for one, and those working out with huge muscles are also probably sometimes eating 3-4000 calories a day to help bulk up (hello, you've been on a low cal diet since you were 14!), they are lifting hundreds and hundreds of pounds every other day, they take all sorts of supplements, or they are literally on steroids. How many of those boxes can you check off as something you do? Muscles burn more calories than fat. AGAIN: muscles burn more calories than fat. One more time b/c you're trying to ignore me: Muscles burn more calories than fat! Ten pounds of muscle burns about 50 calories in a day spent at rest. Don't make it harder on yourself by doing endless cardio which you're ultimately spending much more time and effort doing than you could be spending doing an effective weight training sessions lifting heavier weights in combination or better yet, alternating days with the cardio you feel you have to endlessly do for hours on end (but you know, in general limit that crap to an hour or less). Ultimately ladies, lift heavy at least 4 times/week and do less reps in less time and limit your cardio mania if you want that lean healthy body, to spend less time in the gym, and to burn calories faster.


How You Will Effectively Screw Over Your Health and Fitness Goals

3. Oprah and every other Celebrity Weight Loss Program will help you


Oprah and her ilk are the devil. The devil will offer you things in a shiny glossy package that may seem great on paper, but will screw you over in the end. Take Oprah for example: she's one of the richest women in the world, she has a personal chef and trainer at her beck and call if she wants and has used in the past, she has yo-yo dieted and lost and gained back all her weight and more over decades...oh and did I also mention, she owns 10% of Weight Watchers which she's now trying to get you to join. Suspicious much? This is who you want to follow? You probably don't even have a 5th of her resources, so what makes you think following someone who can't even get their own act together for long term weight loss success with all the money in the world? You think this is a good plan or fitness role model for you? Celebrities whether they are thin or not, want to sell their products to you because they are profitting off of you. If you read the fine print, they are not responsible for you not reaching your goals despite buying their food/products. Seriously, what are Oprah's credentials in terms of health and weight loss? What research has she done? How many people has she trained and helped keep fit over the years? You should be recoiling right about now. It's not just Oprah and other celebs either, its all the weight loss shows you see that are trying to convince you that you can lose weight like the people do on their show, but you can't because you are a normal human being with a 9-5 job or school, a family, who's not getting paid to be there, and you have a life. You do not have 10 hours a day to exercise and you most likely don't have a personal chef. You need to be able to do a plan that is realistic for you and the way you live. An easy way to figure this out is to ask yourself with each of these plans you think of joining, in 3 days, 3 weeks, 3 months, 3 years, in 3 decades, can I sustain myself counting points everyday or drinking only red juices, or working out 5 hours a day. If the answer is no, you need to keep searching and doing your research on people you find over the internet or via a late night infommercial, or even the trainer at your gym until you get one that you can maintain, that isn't filled with products you have to endlessly buy to maintain your health, and that can be implimented anywhere anytime.


How You Will Effectively Screw Over Your Health and Fitness Goals


4. Get Great Abs (only) with these 4 Exercises


This is a great exercise myth that continues on into 2016...the idea that you can spot train one body part and somehow make it great. First of all, who wants great abs, with a saggy butt, batwing arms, and thunder thighs? If you are serious about your fitness goals, your workout plan should be comprehensive. You can sit in your bedroom every night and do 500 crunches all you want, but for all your work, you will see little results. Your body and your muscles, bones, and joints are designed to work in tandem with one another. A good set of abs will help you with a strong back and vice versa. A good set of quads will help you form a nice butt and vice versa. Your focus should be from the start, how do I get a great body, a masterpiece if you will, via my exercise and diet. Don't fall prey to these click it and paste it images of the only 4 exercises you need to do because they are what will waste your valuable time. It's fine to use those 4 exercises as long as you combine them with a full body comprehensive workout plan.


How You Will Effectively Screw Over Your Health and Fitness Goals


5. Frozen "Lean" Meals and Diet Low Fat Low Calorie Foods


It seems like a great idea to eat those frozen packaged meals along with your diet coke, because you think well, it's lean, it has my calorie count right on front, but very few people are ever fully satisfied eating one of those tiny tiny frozen meals which tend to be chock full of salt, additives, and manmade ingredients. A meal should be enjoyable, filling, and something you look forward to eating. That diet coke and many other diet foods/drinks contain aspartame, the chemical sweetener used to replace high fructose corn syrup in diet soda. This sweetener activates the reward centers in your brain and because aspartame doesn’t provide any energy, the body misses out and makes it crave more. Diet soda tries to trick the body, but the body rebels and makes you want more and more to satisfy those reward centers in the brain and provide energy for cells. Yes, we're talking full blown addiction. When constructing a diet, focus on filling your grocery basket with more one ingredient foods that are found in nature vs. those made in a lab. You can healthfully eat much more of those 1 ingredient foods than you can a couple of lean cuisine style meals. Really look at those labels for your low calorie foods and see what all is in them and try to avoid them and rather then continue to chug sodas, diet or not, if you can't make the full switch over to just drinking water, opt to either make or buy 100% fruit juice limiting the amount you drink per day or infuse your water with natural fruit.


How You Will Effectively Screw Over Your Health and Fitness Goals


6. Exercise and Diet in Pill Form


Weight loss pills are either highly dangerous and/or completely useless for you. They usually contain things like tons of caffine to give you "energy" and a whole bunch of vitamins that don't do much for you and they certainly aren't going to help you lose enough weight or be able to sustain it. Again, who is endorsing these products? Where can you find proof that these work outside of the company website and some online testimonials from people who state they've been paid to write a review for them? What number can you call or where can you look up scientific proof that these products are legit, or frankly who has ever even heard of something you're buying on the shelf in the store. Nothing can replace a healthy diet and good exercise. If you've learned nothing, it should be that there are just no easy, gimmicky ways around that.

How You Will Effectively Screw Over Your Health and Fitness Goals
15 Opinion