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“Damn this weight loss plateau! I eat right, I exercise regularly and still I’m stuck at the same number since 2 months. What the hell am I doing wrong?” I’ll tell you what. Maybe it’s your facts more than your actions that are constantly deterring you from moving closer to your weight loss goals.

Sometimes hearsay is unquestioningly accepted as universal truth by majority, simply because it has been passing on from generations. Millions of people end up being a victim to these myths and get caught in the rut, losing all their motivation and finally giving up because even though they’re putting in their best efforts, they hardly see any results.

Of course, you do not want to add onto the statistics of these people. Given below are some of the popular weight loss myths that play culprit for derailing the efforts of a huge majority of weight watchers:

1. “Strength training will make me bulky”

To start with, let’s clarify one thing. One pound of muscle doesn’t weigh more than one pound of fat. They weight just the same, however muscle definitely takes up less space and is denser in comparison to fat. So, two people with same weight can look very different, if one has a higher lean muscle mass to fat ratio. Muscle weight makes a person look more fit, firm, and small. Good muscle mass also enhances metabolism, helping you stay lean.

Strength training makes you optimally burn calories throughout the day and heavier weights can give you the best result of your efforts. The research team of the Washington University School of Medicine found that using heavy weight for the workouts improves the sleeping metabolic rate of exercisers’ by almost 8%, even if you do only 3 to 6 repetitions. This means that you can lose almost 5 pounds more every year even when you do nothing else.

2. “All calories are the same, so what I eat doesn’t make much of a difference as long as my calorie count is right”

For decades people believed that all calories are the same. You eat 500 calories of cake or cereals; they will be burned or stored by your body the same way. It has now been scientifically proven that calories are not at all alike when it comes to losing weight.
Certain foods require more work in eating than others, like chewing whole grains, vegetables or fruits. But these are also the foods that have calories that are more easily burnt when you’re trying to digest them. The mere act of chewing has been known to improve the calorie burn by almost 30%.

A Japanese study also revealed that women who ate food that require more work had better waistlines than the ones who ate foods that are easy to eat. It is actually the protein and fiber in the former that require the effort to digest, which causes your body to not absorb much of their calories.

If you avoid processed foods, your body’s ability to burn fat continues to be high all through the day, so you keep on losing weight and still not feel hungry.

3. “Don’t eat at night, else you’ll gain weight”

NO snacking at night. It’s all logical you know – it’s the time when you’re least active, so you shouldn’t eat too much at that time. Even a study in the Journal named Obesity in April 2011 said that you’re more likely to be obese if you eat after 8 p.m. Why? There are really no clear-cut reasons that have been suggested. And the topic still remains a debatable one, since ages.

The truth is – it is more about how much do you eat, instead of when you eat every day that decides your weight gain. Most people are in the habit of consuming more calories during the night just because they’re bored, or because of negative emotions, like loneliness or any other, and not because they are actually hungry.

This usually makes them exceed their calorie limit for the day and often gets stored in their body as fat. Sometimes these people may also wake up the next day with little or no appetite for breakfast, the meal that regulates our metabolism as well as our calorie intake for the entire day.

Although sleeping early does help, but if that’s not an option, you can try eating your dinner an hour later than you usually does, to avoid the nighttime snacking, suggests a spokesman for American Dietetic Association. Nevertheless, even if you postpone your dinner, make sure that you have it at least two hours before you sleep. This is helpful in avoiding mindless snacking in the evening.

You can try the best weight management program that there is or even buy the most raven weight loss devices for yourself (like this belt) but if you’re trapped in any of the myths mentioned above, you’re sure to reach a stage when you’ll be clueless about how to cross that dreaded plateau. At that time, you’ll know that it was probably one of these myths that were holding you back.

This is why it is important that you do not just accept things on their face value and question the reason behind what you hear. Only then will you be able to debunk these myths and know what’s actually right for you. After all, there are a lot many myths that surround us than the ones that are mentioned here.

Marcia Calleiro is a vegan and a work-from-home mother. Calleiro usually orders from any healthy meal delivery or diet meal delivery service as they serve fresh, tasty and nutritious food. She combines this with her waist trimmer device for overall fitness. She is currently a contributor to Health Care Information Website, a site that educates its readers about various health and weight loss issues. In her free time, she likes square-foot gardening, playing games on her Xbox, and spending time with her family.

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