Many times, I find myself engaging in conversations with some of the older heads in the fitness community and unfortunately some of them still live by some old, odd beliefs in what’s right when it comes to being healthy and building muscle.
Let’s address some of those myths:
Training a muscle group once weekly – Science has shown that this approach is actually inferior when compared to training the same muscle group three times a week, when the same workload is spread out. For example, doing 6 sets of chest 3 days a week, instead of 15-20 sets one day a week.
Fasted cardio – This is no more effective than doing it in a fed state, so if you like feeling hungry doing cardio, go ahead. At the end of the day, it’s calories in, calories out; it matters not if you do cardio fasted or not.
Consuming 6-8 meals a day to get huge – Again, it’s about calories in, calories out; the same amount of calories can be consumed in 3 to 4 meals a day.
You must have a protein shake immediately after training (anabolic window) – The anabolic window does not exist, just eat a protein and carb rich meal one to two hours post-training.
Supplements are not necessary – Whey protein powders can come in handy. Creatine monohydrate does increase strength marginally, caffeine does boost energy, and so does pre-workout. These things can all help you train better on the days you feel off, but besides those, supplements are unnecessary.
And to sum it all up, professional bodybuilders and fitness celebrities are juiced up on all kinds of anabolic steroids and hormones, so pretty much everything they do will have some kind of effect on their bodies. Quite a lot of the talk is irrelevant ‘bro science’ to finance their superficial, unhealthy, and unrealistic lifestyles.
Here are few facts actually backed up by science:
You should eat your fruits and drink your coffee; the benefits are inevitably worthy of being a staple part of any diet.
Over the last couple of years, fruits of all kinds have been given a bad reputation because of the fructose they contain. But this is just something self-proclaimed internet health gurus (keto fanatics) rave on about, without any proven evidence to back up their claims. In real life, fructose doesn’t negatively impact health factors or fat lipids according to new studies, even when subjects were fed 150g of fructose in a day.
Actually, research proves that people with a daily intake of fruit are leaner, healthier, binge less and are less sick. Another great point to make clear, is that fruits are loaded with antioxidants, fibre, and vitamins; they are absolutely healthy to consume.
Eat your fruits and carbs and let the conspiracy lovers believe that keto will cure everything and make you lose fat faster than anything else out there; it’s just too bad for them that science exists.
