7 lies about women's fitness and nutrition

Women are often lied to. Corporations and marketing organizations know that taking care of themselves and their bodies is more important to women than men, which is why women are more susceptible to deceptive health promises than men. Here are some of the worst lies women are told about health, nutrition and fitness.

1 - Yoga will make you fit and strong and get you in shape

Yoga does not make you fit. It doesn't change the shape of your body and it doesn't improve your fitness any more than a leisurely walk.

Apart from giving you the flexibility to turn yourself into a human pretzel, yoga will improve your fitness and strength, but not much more than a leisurely stroll. Let's look at the slightly more beneficial studies first. A study conducted in 2012 with premenopausal women involved two groups, one of which practiced 60 minutes of Ashtanga yoga twice a week for 8 months, while the other group served as a control group.

Members of the yoga group had more strength in their legs at the end of the study than members of the control group, but they were unable to strengthen any other muscles and showed no improvements in other markers of strength or health. A 2013 study using Bikram yoga concluded that after 12 weeks of study, a group of young adults were able to use more weight in deadlifts than at the beginning of the study, but no improvements in other markers of health or fitness were observed. However, a more innovative study showed results that were even smaller than the previous two studies. Yoga devotees practiced their preferred form of yoga for an hour in a metabolic chamber where calorie expenditure and heart rate were monitored. In subsequent tests, the subjects sat motionless in the chamber for an hour, walked at a relaxed pace of 3.2 kilometers per hour or walked faster at a pace of 4.8 kilometers per hour. When the values of the different tests were evaluated, the result was that, from a metabolic point of view, one hour of yoga was comparable to one hour at a speed of 3.2 kilometers per hour - not particularly impressive.

Yoga can build a modicum of strength - at least for beginners. It will strengthen your abdominal muscles. It will allow you to move better and feel better, but it won't do much to improve your fitness or sculpt your body. It's simply too loose to be your only form of exercise. To change the shape of your body and improve your fitness, you should do additional training with weights and sprints.

2 - Juice is healthy

Drinking a lot of juice is not healthy. Juice is high in calories, lacks fiber and nutrients, and will eventually make you fat.

Juice bars are sprouting up like mushrooms and in every one of them you see yoga pants-wearing women waiting for their supposedly healthy seaweed and kumquat mix. And when they're not there in line, they're filling their shopping carts with products like Renovation and Glow that promise to hydrate and nourish their cells, restore alkaline balance and cleanse the body. These drinks are said to make your hair shine, your skin look healthier, energize you, clear your mind and make your immune system and digestive tract impervious to pathogens and irritants.

12 to 16 30 ml vials cost about ten dollars and the flavors range from delicious to something that tastes like it was spit out by a sumo wrestler. The problem with these drinks is that they can't fulfill any of their physiological or medicinal promises. Of course, habitual juice drinkers may lose weight depending on what their juice contains and whether that juice is an improvement over their usual diet, but much of this is simply excreted water that quickly comes back when they go back to eating normal solid food. However, much of the weight lost is also muscle - the stuff that is largely responsible for giving women their shape, not to mention strength and vitality And unfortunately, much of the weight that is initially lost is put back on in the form of fat. Vegetables and fruit contain simple sugars and harder-to-digest carbohydrates. That's great, but when you squeeze them, as is done when you make juice, you break up all those normally harder-to-digest carbs into tiny little pieces so they can bypass much of the digestive process. You end up with a strong insulin release and insulin takes all that sugar and transports some of it to your muscles (if your muscles need carbs at that moment) and more of it to your liver where the sugar is converted into fatty acids aka fat - fat that is stored on your thighs, butt, hips or other parts of your body.

Volume also needs to be considered. In terms of volume, it is easier to digest pulverized fruits and vegetables than fruits and vegetables in their natural form. Non-pulverized plant material takes up a lot of space and this gives your brain the signal that you are full. Juice doesn't take up as much space. You can easily eat one peach or two plums, but you can probably eat five or six of both at once if they've been dried and pulverized.

More fruit means more calories. More fruit means more sugar. More fruit means more sugar that is converted into fat. And it gets worse. Obsessive chronic juice consumption doesn't provide you with enough nutrients to stay healthy, so your metabolism or electrolyte balance can get out of whack. In addition, juicing destroys the fiber, which kills the microflora in your gut, causing it to be excreted in your stool. Keep drinking juice, but don't expect any health benefits from it and drink juice in moderation.

3 - The "Viagra for women" will cure your libido problems

The new "Viagra for women" is a placebo. There is already a real libido enhancing drug for women and it is called testosterone.

Several studies have concluded that the percentage of women between the ages of 18 and 59 who suffer from "sexual dysfunction" is around 50%. The problem is often misdiagnosed as depression, but in reality there are a number of reasons why women don't want to have sex. Illness, imbalances brought on by medication or sleeping pills, a lack of emotional or physical intimacy and a repulsive, self-centered partner are among the possible explanations. Welcome to the world of the first prescription libido pill for women: Flibanserin, brand name Addyi. The drug was originally developed to treat depression, but scientists have observed that it has a mildly positive effect on female sex drive, although they don't know why. The drug increases dopamine levels while simultaneously lowering serotonin levels. Even though the effects are very weak, they were significant enough to meet the effectiveness standards of the US Food and Drug Administration.

The drug must be taken daily and costs between 300 and 400 dollars per month. Side effects include dizziness, drowsiness, fatigue and nausea. Oh yeah, the drug should not be combined with alcohol, which means you can't drink any alcohol at all. But here's the real problem. Addyi will at best give a small percentage of women two or three satisfying sexual episodes a month, which is only one more than a placebo. It will almost certainly have no effect at all on the majority of women. Adriane Fugh-Berman, director of an organization that promotes the judicious use of drugs, puts it this way: "They have approved a drug that works little better than a placebo but has serious side effects." This is tragic, sad and confusing because there has been an effective treatment for female "sexual dysfunction" called testosterone for years. Any doctor who rightfully holds that title knows this, but doctors shy away from the subject, saying that we don't know the long-term effects of such treatment. To be honest, you could say this about pretty much every substance on the planet. Testosterone is a natural substance that flows through the veins of every healthy woman in the world. Dozens of tests have shown that testosterone increases female libido and that there is a direct correlation between low libido and low testosterone levels. For one thing, just like men, women suffer from a decrease in testosterone levels as they age, but many common medications can also affect testosterone levels. These include blood pressure medications, antibiotics, gastrointestinal medications, antidepressants, recreational drugs, alcohol and, ironically, the contraceptive pill. The pill, along with estrogen therapy, reduces testosterone production by the ovaries and increases the levels of steroid hormone binding globulin (SHBG), which binds the remaining free testosterone and renders it ineffective, tenfold.

The answer lies in testosterone replacement therapy for women. Even though testosterone is not approved for use in women, doctors can easily prescribe it for "off label" use. There are various forms of treatment available, ranging from implantable pellets and injections to gels and creams, all of which are free from the negative side effects of Addyi (if their use is carefully monitored). In addition, testosterone also works much better.

4 - You must detox

Detoxing and detoxing is nonsensical. Your liver and kidneys can easily detoxify themselves.

The detox concept is related to the concept of juice cleanses, but it is based on its own special level of peddling. The idea behind detoxing is that you need to flush and cleanse your body of toxins, which unfortunately are never defined. Real toxins exist, but they are usually associated with alcohol overdose, drug overdose, heavy metals or poisoning. Clever businessmen, however, have planted the idea in our heads that we are rotting, bubbling vats of toxic waste and that if we could flush all this stuff out of our gut we would look better, feel better and live forever - or whatever. Amazingly, this concept emerged in the late nineteenth century. It was called "autointoxication" and linked the gut directly to health. Cleanse the gut like a chimney is swept and you can cure any disease. However, by the early twentieth century, science had advanced far enough to flush this concept down the toilet.

It is perhaps not really surprising that this concept has resurfaced in our modern age, with our supposed scourge now said to be a combination of food additives, drugs, gluten, smog, vaccines, genetically modified foods and food dyes. Detox and cleanse program advocates claim that all this stuff forms a toxic gunk or "slimy plaque" in our gut and that this is a breeding ground for parasites, fungi and probably radioactive monsters. But this mucus or slimy plaque doesn't exist. Ask any gastroenterologist who spends his days examining intestines.

The truth is that our lymphatic system, liver and kidneys do a fantastic job of detoxifying our bodies. The detox people seem to be aware of the role that these organs play, but they say that they need to be cleaned periodically - like the air filter in a car. But that's not how it works. The liver cleans itself through a series of chemical reactions. Waste products are flushed out via bile acid or released into the bloodstream and eliminated by the kidneys.

But if logic and science are not enough for you, then you should at least consider the position of over 300 scientists from the UK who have investigated the claims of detox products and diets. They concluded that the word detox has no meaning and that there are no two companies that define it in the same way. In addition, many companies use the words cleanse and detox to market a range of products including hair products and inserts. Of course you will lose weight during a colon cleanse program, but this is mainly water weight and muscle tissue. Why do people do this? Apart from believing in the supposed science, psychologists suggest that in some cases such cleansing has become a socially acceptable form of anorexia.

5 - Jogging will make you fit and hot

Jogging will ruin your body. You're better off sprinting, training with weights, CrossFit WODs, kettlebell training or rowing.

If you think running is the key to fitness, or will in some way give you the body of a fitness model or even just a nice, averagely attractive body, then you should stand at the finish line of a marathon or half marathon. You'll probably see a casting director from "The Walking Dead" in the crowd, because the people crossing the finish line usually already look like zombies from a physical point of view. Just a bit of makeup and a glued on protruding eyeball and you have the perfect zombie.

Compare this with the YouTube videos of a few world-class sprinters. The difference will be astonishing. The long-distance runners are pale figures with knobbly knees and sunken flat chests, while the sprinters look like two-legged versions of beautiful muscular, fiery Arabian horses. The truth is that both jogging and long-distance running are not the real deal. The former uses too little energy and doesn't push your body hard enough to make major changes, while the latter eats away at your muscles until there's not much more than a few hairs, some nerve tissue and a pair of neon-colored Asics shoes left.

Of course, not everyone loses all their body mass right away when they transition to long-distance running. Some corpulent women never change pace. They become good at covering any distance at their chosen speed. The body gets used to it, it becomes easy. They no longer burn as many calories as when they started. They stay as they are or even get fatter because they think they can eat more due to their supposed calorie-burning activity. However, the body needs to be challenged to change and achieve a higher level of fitness. To build round, curvy muscles, women need to train with weights. If running is their preferred activity, then they need to sprint or cover relatively short distances quickly. Pretty much anything is better than jogging or long distance running. Activities like jumping rope, kettlebell swings, rowing, weightlifting, circuit training, CrossFit WODs and Tabata training will change your body a lot more and a lot faster than running at a moderate pace.

The old theory was that aerobic activities burn more calories than anaerobic activities. It is true that training with weights or sprinting will burn fewer calories during the actual workout, but if you look at the total amount of calories burned during and after the workout, anaerobic training with weights and sprinting will burn significantly more calories.

6 - The HCG diet is a solid, science-based diet

The HCG diet is a completely insane diet. This diet works just as "well" without HCG, but eating only 500 kcal per day will ultimately not be productive and will damage your health.

According to the nutritional apostle Anthony Colpo, the supposedly revolutionary HCG diet came about in 1930. Back then, an Indian doctor began treating fat boys with a calorie-restricted diet and the drug HCG. This drug is typically used by women to promote fertility and by men who use anabolic steroids to protect against testicular atrophy. The doctor used this therapy for about 20 years and reported in the medical journal Lancet that patients who followed this diet for 40 days lost 20 pounds and did not regain the weight. Other doctors began using this diet and reported similar successes. The use of this method flourished until controlled studies repeatedly showed that the same weight loss could be achieved without HCG. The FTC instructed these clinics to stop these treatments, which they largely did, until 2007 when an infomercial guru appeared on television and resurrected this plan in a book. The FTC eventually sued him for misinterpreting the contents of this book and fined him heavily.

Nevertheless, the diet began to flourish again. More controlled studies were conducted and showed, as before, that the same results could be achieved without HCG. Ultimately, only 500 kcal per day is allowed during this diet and of course you lose weight with such a low calorie intake. However, supporters of this diet refused to accept these studies. Those who use this diet claim that the HCG makes them feel great. Perhaps this is so, but it is probably simply the fact that the injection itself makes them feel good. Ultimately, the placebo effect is very powerful, which is especially true when needles are involved.

Studies have been done to investigate the placebo effect and they concluded that those who did this diet alone felt tired and weak, while those who did it with the support of HCG felt great. However, the same was true for those who received a placebo instead of HCG. Some studies support some claims about the HCG diet, but these studies have more flaws and holes in their design than a Swiss cheese. In addition, others have not been able to replicate these study results, which is a key factor in verifying a study. Despite all this, women all over the world continue to use this diet, spending between 30 and 600 dollars a month, sometimes using a homeopathic version of the drug that contains no more than trace amounts of the active ingredient. Yes, the HCG diet works, if we define working as losing weight, but the problem is that this weight is largely muscle and water and only a small amount of fat - and all of this can be achieved by following this diet without HCG. Of course, it is stupid to follow a diet with such a low calorie intake.

7 - Vitamin-enriched water is good for you

Vitamin water is worthless. These products contain too much of the wrong vitamins and too little of the right vitamins and are also overloaded with sugar.

In the US, and increasingly in Europe, vitamins are added to all kinds of products. These products range from breakfast cereals to toothpaste and lubricating creams. And, of course, vitamins are also added to beverages. The manufacturers of these products tell us that drinking vitamin-enriched water will make us feel better, look better and even improve our relationships. In addition, people use these products to feel nutritionally sublime. They drink one of these waters and walk around with a niacin-enhanced halo, but in reality there is nothing healthy about these products. Most of these products contain large amounts of B vitamins and vitamin C (as these vitamins are water soluble), but the average diet is almost never deficient in these vitamins. Aside from this, excessive consumption of these vitamins has no health benefits as excess amounts are simply excreted. Some versions of vitamin water contain small amounts of vitamins A and E and some minerals such as potassium, magnesium, manganese, zinc and chromium, but 83% of the drinks examined in one study contained at least one nutrient in excess of the daily requirement and the majority of these drinks contained three or more nutrients in excess of the daily requirement.

Unfortunately, few people talk about the concerns of exceeding daily requirements for these nutrients, especially when you add what's in these drinks to what you're already getting in your diet. Increased levels of fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamins A and E are associated with an increased risk of earlier death. In addition, there is research showing that consuming too much of certain vitamins such as vitamin C can cause them to act like pro-oxidants before they are excreted, meaning that they promote the formation of potentially damaging free radicals. But let's forget all this. Many of these drinks contain large amounts of sugar. One of the most popular brands contains 31 grams of sugar per 355 ml can, which is almost as much as the 39 grams of sugar in the same amount of Coca Cola. Stop being gullible. Stop taking too many vitamins. Drink plain water or green tea. You'll be much better off for it.

From TC Luoma
Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/7-lies-about-womens-fitness-diet