7 Stubborn Fitness Myths
Don’t let one of these muscle misconceptions come between you and a calorie-burning, body-sculpting workout
After diet, there’s nothing more rampant with myths, half-truths, and downright falsehoods than exercise—especially its effect on weight loss. Follow any of this inaccurate advice, and you may wind up wasting time, energy, and money, or even injuring yourself.
No need to bust out a lie detector, though. Jason Greenspan, an ACE (American Council on Exercise)-certified personal trainer and founder of Practical Fitness & Wellness, identified the seven most common, persistent misunderstood notions about fitness—and offered the honest truth to help you build a strong, lean body.
Reality: A pound is a pound is a pound—unless you’re defying the laws of physics. No substance weighs more then another one unless it actually weighs more. Simply put: One pound of fat weighs the same as one pound of muscle. “The difference is that fat is bulkier than muscle tissue and takes up more space under the skin,” Greenspan says. In fact, one pound of fat is roughly the size of a small grapefruit; one pound of muscle is about the size of a tangerine. But that tangerine is active tissue, meaning that it burns more calories at rest than fat does.
