4 Bogus Weight Loss Rules You Can Ignore (Seriously)

Don’t drink and drive. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Don’t step on the cracks or you’ll break your mother’s back. This is all really good, sensical advice. Unfortunately, sensical advice easily floats out the window when it comes to something so emotionally driven and personally important as weight loss. These are the weight loss rules you can ignore (seriously).

The tidbits below are often taken as weight loss commandment but the truth is, they’re mostly over-generalized b.s.

4 WEIGHTLOSS “RULES” TO IGNORE COMPLETELY

Focus on Cardio

Cardiovascular workouts are great for your heart, your stress level, improving health markers and your overall health but they aren’t the bees-knees of weight loss workouts.

It’s a bit counterintuitive, since every treadmill, elliptical machine and rower come with build in calorie counters. While it’s true that hour for hour you burn more calories going for a run than you do lifting weights, it’s the long term adaptations to those exercises that make the real difference.

Instead of focusing solely on cardio, mix it in with a focused, progressively challenging strength training program.

Strength training builds lean tissue by causing micro-tears in your muscles which your body then has to work hard to repair and rebuild. The more lean muscle tissue you can build the more energy your body expends simply maintaining that muscle.

If fat loss is your goal, use cardio strategically to accelerate your results. HIIT cardio in particular has proven time and again to torch calories without sacrificing that hard earned muscle.

Looking for inspiration? Here are some of my favorite strength training and HIIT workouts from this past year!

• 8 Exercise Dumbbell Workout for Strong and Toned Arms
• 7 Workout Routines for Fat Loss
• 14-Day At Home Workout Challenge

Avoid High Fat Foods

Despite mainstream marketing, high fat foods are not necessarily bad for you or your weight loss goals.

Have you ever heard the phrase “you need fat to burn fat“? You’re body needs fat. Fat is long-term energy. It supports cell growth, protects your organs, keeps your body warm, is involved in hormone production, and transports nutrients. It’s a vital component of a healthy body.

Natural fats ought to be included in your diet. Avocado, coconut, seeds, nuts, olives are all examples of healthy fats found naturally in foods. Even the saturated fat found in egg yolks and red meat are good for you in small doses and at a high quality.

But not all fats have equal health benefits and some fats should be avoided. Namely: trans fats. Trans fats are found in processed foods like margarine, and it is smart to avoid them.

Bonus tip: foods that naturally contain fat but have been altered in order to be “low-fat” are often loaded with refined sugar. Not a worthy food swap!

Restricting Calories is the Only Way to Lose Weight

While a caloric deficit is necessary for weight loss, it’s more complicated than that.

There are plenty of other factors that go into how your body sheds weight: age, hormones, genes, stress, muscle mass, exercise history, diet history, current workout program, current diet…You realize pretty quickly that calories in versus calories out is too simple an explanation.

Here are a few reasons calorie restriction doesn’t explain it all away:

1. The more you have to lose, the faster you will see the weight come off. You’re body has a happy weight and as you approach that weight, or drop below it, your body fights hard to maintain what it thinks it needs.
2. Your metabolic rate slows down or speeds up depending on your body composition, what you eat, how you work out, how much you weigh, etc. As you lose weight, your metabolism slows down (especially when in a caloric deficit), because, well, there’s less of you to maintain. Your metabolism speeds up on a high protein diet because protein is hard to digest.
3. Your body weight fluctuates naturally according to your hormone cycle.
4. Your eating habits are on point, you’re working out hard every week but your stress level is through the roof.
5. Or you don’t get enough sleep.
6. Or you consumed a lot of salt last night.

Tips to level up your food focus:

• Consume 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass.
• Eliminate processed food and focus on real, whole foods instead.
• Drink at least 8, 8 ounce cups of water each day.
• Slow and steady wins the race – don’t cut 500 calories at once. Start small and work your way into it.

Don’t Eat Past 8 pm

It doesn’t matter what time of day you eat. When it comes to weight loss, your body doesn’t care if it’s 8 am or 8 pm, it cares about overall intake. As long as you stick to eating fewer calories than you burn, time of day won’t matter.

The problem with eating late at night, and the reason the idea that post-8pm noshing is a weight loss catastrophe exists, is that those calorie do happen to be in excess of what you actually need. On top of that, food choices late at night tend to be emotion or stress driven – not hunger driven.

If you are a late night snacker keep in mind that the nutrients that you eat late in the day aren’t going to be used immediately for energy. Grab a snack that is a good mix of fat and protein like Greek yogurt and berries with walnuts, or avocado and cottage cheese.