6 Weight Loss Myths
6 Weight Loss Myths
27 May 2013 By Nicole Falcone
Even the most health-savvy runners can get caught up in diet myths that sabotage their goals.
“Weight loss is so complex and confusing because there is so much conflicting information out there,” says dietician Leslie Bonci, director of sports nutrition at a university medical centre. With our experts’ help and the latest research, we’ve dispelled six myths so you can start slimming down for good.
Myth: No Sweets Before Noon
Most runners who want to lose weight assume they have to ditch the dessert. But not only can you have it, you can have it for breakfast, according to a study published in March 2012 in the journal Steroids: Researchers found that participants who ate a 2 500kJ, carb- and protein-rich breakfast that included dessert – such as chocolate or ice cream – lost more weight over four months (and kept more off the following four months) than a group that ate a low-carb morning meal.
“Dessert for breakfast sounds so sinful,” says Bonci, “but if you allow yourself a tad more indulgent breakfast, you might eat less during the day instead of trying to be really ‘good’ and overcompensating later.”
Make It Work: Eat a 2 500kJ or so breakfast rich in vegetables, fruit, protein, and carbs, and add a sweet if you crave it.
Avoid kilojoule bombs, like mega-chocolate chip muffins, says Bonci; instead, have a shake made with vanilla yoghurt, banana, peanut butter, and a little chocolate, or a banana muffin with almond butter.
Myth: Added Fibre Keeps You Full
High-fibre foods, like fruits and vegetables, take longer to digest and hold more water, which is why they fill you up and aid weight loss. Companies have capitalised on this by adding fibre to everything from yoghurt to snack bars. But does this fibre work?
University researchers allowed study participants to replace two meals a day with a low-fibre snack bar, or one that contained 10 grams of added fibre. The results (published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics) show the added fibre had no effect on fullness, and caused more bloating than the low-fibre bars. “Everyone in the food industry is jumping on the fibre bandwagon,” says Bonci, “but as this study shows, not all fibres are created equal.”
Make It Work: To quell hunger, Bonci recommends sticking with foods naturally high in fibre – whole grains, beans, fruits, and vegetables. They tend to be lower-kilojoule, and take up more room in the stomach than processed foods with fibre.
Myth: Carbs lead to weight gain
Runners know carbs are essential for training, but many still cut back if they’re trying to lose weight. After all, eating lots of carbs – as you would, pre-race – causes the scale to go up. “Carbs act like a sponge,” says Bonci, “helping you absorb water.” That weight is temporary, and means you’re well-fuelled. But there’s more reason to keep carbs – whole-grain carbs – in your diet.
According to a study published in April 2012, participants who ate a low-kilojoule diet high in wholewheat for 12 weeks lost more fat than a group that ate a low-kilojoule diet high in refined wheat – most probably because the extra fibre in whole grains was more filling.
Make It Work: Whenever you eat grains, make them whole, says dietician Katherine Beals, PhD, a university associate professor. To make this a reality, cook a large batch of grains to eat all week. Add different nuts, dried fruits, vegetables, and meats to vary the flavours.
Myth: Cut all fat
Fat is the most kilojoule-dense nutrient, so it would make sense that eating less of it would help you lose weight. But slashing your fat intake may have the opposite effect. In a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers compared participants on three diets – low-fat, low-glycaemic, and low-carb.
Eating a low-fat diet decreased resting energy expenditure (or the number of kilojoules you burn at rest) the most. Cutting back on fat also affected hormones essential to keeping cholesterol and insulin in check. “We need fat for many reasons,” says Bonci. “It’s an important fuel source for exercise. If you don’t consume enough, your body will burn muscle.”
Make It Work: “When people eat a low-fat diet, they add flavour in other ways, such as by eating sugar,” says Bonci. She recommends 30 per cent of your kilojoules come from fat – and two-thirds of that should be the healthy unsaturated kinds from nuts, oils, fish, eggs, and avocados.
Myth: You should only use zero-kilojoule sweeteners
For runners looking to shed kilos, using zero-kilojoule sweeteners such as sucralose, aspartame, and stevia, may be an appealing choice, since swopping out a sugar-packed cooldrink for a diet version is an easy way to cut kilojoules. But according to a joint study statement by the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association, the scientific evidence connecting zero-kilojoule sweeteners with long-term weight loss is inconclusive.
Why? One of the main problems is overcompensation. If you save 600 kilojoules by drinking a diet cooldrink, but then reward yourself with an extra helping at dinner, you’ve negated any kilojoule-saving benefit.
Make it work: “If you drink lots of cooldrink or add tons of sugar to your coffee,” says Bonci, “you may want to try diet versions.” However, “if using a zero-kilojoule sweetener gives you licence in your mind to eat whatever you want, then it’s not the right choice for you.
You have to make sure cutting back in one arena doesn’t prompt you to overdo it in another.”
Myth: Add More Long Runs
Many runners assume that going longer is always better – especially when it comes to weight loss. But a recent Danish study published in September 2012 found that this isn’t always the case. During the study, researchers asked overweight participants to do 30 or 60 minutes of moderate exercise a day.
Surprisingly, those who exercised less lost more weight during the 13-week study. What’s the catch? The group that exercised longer ended up eating more throughout the day than the moderate-exercise group. In other words, the longer they exercised, the more they overcompensated for it.
Make It Work: Running long is good, but not if you overeat because of it, says Beals. Make sure you pay attention to your diet on days you do run long. On the flip side, beginners should be encouraged to know you don’t need to run for hours to see real weight-loss results
Running Helps You Find Your Inner Self
Try to run like Rocky Balboa or Shalane Flanagan, and you'll soon find out who you really are.
By Marc Parent;Published May 7, 2013
The predominant feature of a self-appointed genius is ignorance. Before you begin something, you know everything about it. Once you start, you realize you know nothing. Back when I knew everything about running—back before I'd ever actually tried it—I drove past a runner one day and pointed him out to my wife. He was hunched over, tilted a little sideways, jabbing his fists low from his hips, and twisting his face rhythmically to his shoulder. I thought he looked terrible. Pick up the stride, Dude, I thought. Bring your head up, close your mouth, and brighten your eyes, for crying out loud. You wouldn't expect anyone seated at a restaurant to let their face go slack and their eyes go loopy unless there was something wrong. Why should it be any different for someone on the road?
"The guy cares about his appearance enough to go running," I told Susan. "You'd think he'd try to look a little better while he's actually doing it."
I, self-appointed genius, began running for the sake of appearance, so my stride was a primary concern. No problem there. I would just try not to run in a stupid-looking way. How hard could it be? A stride wasn't something you were born with, after all—it was something you could pull off a rack and throw on like a suit. If I went slow and breathed like a windbag and my face turned red and sprouted rivers, there was nothing I could do about it. But I could run however I chose. I could heroically trot with my chin lifted and slightly canted toward the sun. I could drop my hips and hunch my shoulders and hunker down like I was up to something important that no one should question. I could smile and lope like a pro basketball player who would explode with finesse at any moment. If my body went crazy, I could wrap it in a nice suit that would somehow counterbalance the ugly truth.
Within moments of my first time out, I thought about Rocky from the movie and tried to run like him—slow and loose with a casual suggestion in the movements that my body might flash with a flurry of punches. No one could ask why I was running like Rocky all of a sudden, because maybe that's just how I did it. Maybe it was a happy coincidence that I happened to run just exactly like Rocky. After a few minutes of jogging with light shadowboxing, my stride devolved into something that wasn't anything at all like Rocky's and much more like an overweight guy in his early 40s who had never run a day in his life.
The first lessons are almost always the best lessons, and it was no different here: Running is a kind of truth serum. It brutally strips away everything you put on and leaves you with only yourself. The runner on the road, hunched over or otherwise, knows something that the passenger in the car doesn't. Down to the core, the runner knows who he is. The runner has to. He's so tired, who he is is all that's left.
The fact that I've been running a few years now and should know better hasn't stopped me from trying new personas at the outset of almost every run. Today for example, I began with small, springy steps and high fists that would have mortified my family. I had just seen a video of this guy who claimed the stride should come off the toes and land on the toes. He looked like a version of that British vacuum guy—smart and modern and like he'd have bathrooms in his house with prototype toilets made by Google, I suppose. Anyway, very trustworthy, and the stride looked great on him, despite the fact that he was wearing something like sandals. He was showing other attractive people in sandals how to do it. They ran in place with their knees flicking up to their bellies and then magically accelerated forward without any perceivable change in what they were doing. Their heads remained still as if they were riding hovercrafts. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to stride like a sandal-footed, level-headed, British vacuum guy, and I did for the first mile or so before the run returned me to my truer self.
Rough visual for the stride of my truer self, by the way: Take a large industrial trash bag full of two-by-fours that have been cut to three-foot lengths and doused with whale blubber, shake the bag furiously, and let the boards have their way.
Once I had an idea at the start of a run that wasn't about strides. Instead of letting my hands flop uselessly at my hips, I closed my thumbs and index fingers into relaxed "okay" signs and swung them high enough that I could catch glimpses of them and tell myself I was okay with every stride. What a powerful message to repeatedly send yourself through the toil of a run! What a subconscious world of good it would do! For a moment I thought I'd discovered something that would have me bounding over mountains. I can't say exactly when it happens but somewhere after a mile of swinging okay signs across your face, it goes from brilliant to breathtakingly dumb.
But the run makes trash of every bauble and artifact, layer upon layer, whether it's something in your form, or something on your body, or something in your mind, until you're empty and bare and raw. The New York Times set up a booth one year at the finish line of the New York City Marathon so that runners could step in to be photographed just moments after they had completed the 26.2-mile distance. Hundreds of people of all ages, sizes, and races stepped in to be shot, and the pictures were posted online. I clicked through most of them. They were some of the most intimate portraits I'd ever seen. What made the shots so stunning—newsworthy, even—was that in every instance, you were looking at people in a way you never see them, and in a way they would rarely let themselves be photographed: without expression or intention or emotion or even thought; without hairstyle, makeup, outfit, or really, grooming of any kind. The runner knows who he is. The farther he runs, the more he knows, the more that shows.
We've all been told at some point in life that the only way to win is to be yourself. But how can you be yourself if you don't know who that is? If you think lying is only something you can do with language, then it's relatively easy to stay truthful. But if you believe motivations, gestures, expressions, postures, and the deep, unconscious rivers that drive those can also lie, you begin to understand the complexity of moving truthfully from one moment to the next.
Because the first time I saw Shalane Flanagan run, I went out later that afternoon thinking I could probably keep up with her if I only rolled my legs out with the same long, whiplike lashes she did. And for the first mile I did just that. Then I got really tired and stopped thinking about her. Then I went farther and stopped thinking altogether and just ran, my mouth hanging open, somewhat hunched over, and probably tilted a little to one side.
The World’s Simplest Learn to Run Program
All you need is 30 minutes, three times each week.
By Jenny HadfieldPublished May 17, 2013
I’ve been out of shape for the past few years and I’m trying to start running. The problem is every time I try, I get through about one or two weeks and stop. I have a hard time following a training plan with all the intervals. Is it just me, or is there a chance I can actually run someday? Help! Jack
Jack, I’m so happy you wrote. One, please know you aren’t alone in your struggle. And two, it doesn’t have to be so complicated or hard. The key is to make it fun and keep it simple. When you do, running becomes a habit for life.
I’m going to share a learn-to-run strategy that is so simple, I could even do it. This is how I learned and how I’ve coached newbies for years. It doesn’t involve intervals, speed, calculations, or big words.
It is based solely on your body and how it responds to running. In fact, it’s a plan that is customized to you, because it progresses when your body is ready to do so.
Are you ready?
Here we go…
Mark three months on your calendar and schedule a running workout three times per week, every other day (i.e. Monday, Wednesday, Saturday).
Commit to thirty minutes. No more, no less.
Warm up five minutes. Start every running workout with five minutes of walking to prepare your body for the demands of running. Start out at an easy effort and progress to a purposeful walking pace by the end of the five minutes.
Run and walk by your body. Alternate running until you hear your breath, and walking until you catch your breath for a total of 20 minutes. No formulas or intervals—run by your body and breath. If you’re like me, you may start out with 15 to 20 seconds of running and 2 to 3 minutes of walking until you catch your breath. No worries. That may be where your body is at fitness-wise right now. Go with it, tune into your body, and avoid pushing to go longer.
The next workout may be close to the same as well. But a few weeks down the road, that 15 seconds will grow to 30 or 45 seconds or even a minute, and the time it takes to catch your breath will drop. That’s when it starts to get fun, because you feel the difference as you go.
Stick with 20 minutes. Keep the total time of the running portion of the workout to 20 minutes until you build up to running 20 minutes total. That is, maintain the total time of the workout and allow your body time to adapt to the demands of running until you go farther. You’ll recover faster, enjoy the workout a lot more, and progress to running more efficiently. It may take you several months to run 20 minutes, but once you’re there, you’ll be able to add on more time. (25, 30, 35 minutes…)