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5 Biggest Fitness Myths

By Carlos Torres

There are many fitness myths spread in the gym. Here are some of the most popular fitness myths.

Fitness myth #1 - Higher repetitions burn more fat. Using a lighter weight and doing a higher amount of repetitions is not as effective in burning fat as using a heavier weight and doing few repetitions. Using a heavier weight will stimulate muscle increase and your metabolism much greater than using a light weight and doing higher repetitions.

Fitness myth #2 - Muscle turns to fat or fat turns to muscle. This is physically impossible. You either lose or gain fat or lose or gain muscle. If you stop working out for example you will lose muscle and gain fat if you continue to eat like you did before because you are not burning as many calories.

Fitness myth #3 - Weight lifting makes you bulky. Women are usually worried about this. Strength training can help you build muscle to burn fat which in turn can make you smaller! Fat takes up about 3 times as much space as muscle, so if you gained 5 pounds of muscle and lost 5 pounds of fat, you would be the same weight but you would actually be thinner. It is very difficult to build a lot of muscle. It takes hard work, heavy weights, and an increase in caloric intake. Very few people have to worry about gaining too much muscle. If it was only that easy!

Fitness myth #4 - Long, slow, low intensity cardio is best for fat burning. This is not true. Cardiovascular exercise at a higher intensity will burn more fat than lower intensity. It is true that low intensity cardio will burn a higher percentage of calories from fat but high intensity cardio will burn more fat calories overall. The best fat burning cardio you can do is interval training which includes high intensity intervals followed by low intensity intervals. Think about a sprinter and a long distance runner. Who has the best physique? The sprinter does because of the type of training done which is high intensity interval training.

Fitness myth #5 - Carbohydrates are bad. Not all carbohydrates are bad. You should eat the right kind of carbohydrates like whole grains, vegetables, and fruits and avoid bad carbohydrates like sugar, white flour, white bread, etc….The most important thing to remember is the amount of calories you take in. I don’t care if you eat very healthy or not, if you eat more calories than your body needs then you will gain fat. If you eat less than your body needs then you will lose weight.

These are some of the most common fitness myths. Applying this information should help you get better results from your own fitness program.

About the Author:

Carlos Torres is a certified Personal Trainer with a degree in Exercise & Sports Science located in San Antonio, Texas. For questions and comments, send an email to .