It’s only recently that there’s been such a focus on weight loss. That’s probably because obesity is now the leading cause of preventable death. Much of the new research has uncovered some surprising fat loss facts that not everyone is going to like. They may fly in the face of what was once conventionally thought of as fact or just make you rethink your weight loss program. For instance, people who eat in restaurants gain more weight than those who don’t. Eating just one meal out a week can translate to two extra pounds a year, no matter how carefully you choose the fare. According to the Department of Agriculture study, meals eaten out boost the caloric intake by 134 extra calories.
Extra exercise doesn’t translate to extra weight loss.
This is proof that you can get too much of a good thing. That doesn’t mean that an active lifestyle doesn’t help, because it does. It also provides many other benefits than just weight loss. Danish researchers found that sedentary men who added a thirty minute workout to their schedule actually lost more than those who included an hour of the same intensity workout. The hypothesis from this was that the men working out a shorter period were less tired and therefore more active after working out. They also tended to eat about the same number of calories while the hour workout men ate more. The real takeaway is that both groups lost more than the control group who added no exercise to their daily activities….an average of five to seven pounds more in just 13 weeks.
Training hard will guarantee you’ll have a six-pack. NOT!
That’s actually both right and wrong. If you’re overweight, training hard may really guarantee that you have that set of abs you’ve dreamt about, it will just be hidden by a layer of abdominal fat. No matter how hard you train, if you have a fatty layer of skin hiding the results, nobody, including you, will be able to tell. The key to getting the six pack abs? Lose weight. It comes off all over the body, but once your weight is down low enough, all your hard work will show.
Cutting out carbs and fat and focusing on just protein will help you shed fat and build muscles.
Wrong again! You need all food groups for your body to function properly, including weight loss. Healthy fat plays an important role in that, just as good carbs do. After all, fruits and vegetables are carbohydrates and you know you need them in your diet. Don’t compromise your health or your weight loss efforts with an all or nothing lopsided way of eating. Eat healthy!
- Your body is bigger than the world community when it comes to fat cells. This is actually a depressing fact. The average adult body contains 50 billion fat cells. That’s more cells than there are humans on the earth.
- Every 150 seconds, a fat cell on your body dies. That’s a little more uplifting.
- Eating too many calories makes you fat, which doesn’t mean that eating fat or any other particular food does it. Too often people feel that one particular type of food is the enemy. While some foods are healthier than others are, it’s the total caloric intake that puts on weight.
- Some diet foods, such as low fat yogurt, may actually make you gain weight. When they take the fat out of it, they replace it with sugar to make it taste good and that adds more weight than the fat would have.