Eating fat makes you fat.
Carbs are bad for you.
You need to eat small meals every few hours to boost metabolism.
Detox teas, powders and juice cleanse your body.
Protein is more important than real food.
Have you fallen for one or all of these nutritional myths? I don’t like to see people who are going all out for their health being conned into health myths that will derail them from their health goals.
Let’s dispel those 5 myths:
Here are 5 ways health conscious people are wasting time, energy, and money.
1. Eating fat makes you fat.
The wrong food going into the right person promotes fat. I have no shortage of patients who came to me eating doughnuts, pasta with creamy sauce and drinking soda pop on the regular and maintain a very lean physique.
Any time people come in talking about how they are eating fat to lose weight or they are abstaining from fat to lose weight, I throw up a red flag as this is a sure sign they have not been taught how to nourish themselves.
Without fat, cell membranes shrivel, skin wrinkles, and the brain atrophies. Go ahead, try to get fat by eating avocados, grass-fed beef, salmon, walnuts and coconut.
2. Carbs are bad for you.
Once again carbohydrates are neither good nor bad for you. In fact, the moment we say carbs are bad or this food is bad we create a moral issue related to food. Food doesn’t have a soul. It has no capacity to be good or bad.
Labeling food as bad can actually create unnecessary fear and restrictive eating habits, which leads to binge eating. Consider why you’re eating the food. Is it because of a craving, or is it satiating (meaning my body says okay that is enough)? For example, crackers, chips, apples, carrots, all have a heavy amount of carbohydrates, but create a very different human health experience.
3. You need to eat small meals every few hours to boost metabolism.
When we eat our metabolism increases, because it requires energy to digest and assimilate food substances. Some people have intense food addiction and will find eating small meals throughout the day helpful when gaining control of their food routine, whereas others will find that preparing 4-6 meals throughout the day, a stressful endeavor that actually handicaps the body composition changes they are going for.
A study in 2011 published in the British Journal of Nutrition found no difference in weight loss between those eating frequent meals and those that did not. The differentiating factor was what people ate.
4. Detox teas, powders and juice cleanse your body.
If you are an American, you have probably fell for this one a few times. Please save your money and the health of your liver and kidneys.
Doing a detox and feeling terrible doesn’t mean you are detoxing. It means you’re either sensitive to the substance you are consuming or you are pushing your liver, digestion, kidney, and lymphatics in a way that these detox systems do not have the capacity or resources to stay up with.
Recognize the body and every cell that makes it up are living entities. The body is not a car you just run through the car wash or toilet that you flush and miraculously you are back to baseline.
The best way to detox or cleanse the body is with a good night of sleep, whole organic foods, plenty of filtered water, daily bowel movements, removing toxins from your environment, and consuming supportive herbs and nutrients to ensure the body has the necessary resources to do what it does best.
5. Protein is more important than real food.
Orgain protein drinks, Premier protein drinks, vegetable and whey protein isolates do not compare to real food that is high protein to promote optimal health or body composition. Life produces life.
Eating packaged food or drinks because they are high in protein is like buying things on Black Friday that you don’t need, simply because they are on sale.
Protein is of course high value, but it is the synergy of real food substance that comes along with the protein in eggs, dairy, beef, bison, seafood, and hemp seeds, that give it its true power.
Kicking these 5 nutritional myths to the curb will do 90% of the work in keeping you from the charlatans and health swindlers and on the path of health accumulation.
