One thing I find amazing is how much "common knowledge" is just plain wrong, but since it is repeated over and over it's taken as fact. A lot of these things sound reasonable, so we don't investigate the matter any further. It can be a little disturbing to learn just how many things we assume are true simply aren't.
I'm going to post examples of such things as I come across them. I welcome any corrections, but will happily ignore corrections that do not cite credible sources. (Hey, what do you want, I'm a scientist.)
Here are a few things that are wrong:
- You will gain weight if you eat food at night before going to sleep.
- If you exercise, your body's metabolism will increase so that when you are resting you will burn more calories than you would have otherwise (also known as "afterburn").
This New York Times article cites a study by the British Journal of Sports and Medicine that was unable to measure any such afterburn effect.
“To their surprise, the researchers found that none of the groups, including the athletes, experienced “afterburn.” They did not use additional body fat on the day when they exercised. In fact, most of the subjects burned slightly less fat over the 24-hour study period when they exercised than when they did not.”
The message here of course is not to skip exercise. Which brings me to the most important part of the weight loss equation:
“The message of our work is really simple,” although not agreeable to hear, Melanson said. “It all comes down to energy balance,” or, as you might have guessed, calories in and calories out.”
If you consume more calories than you burn, you gain weight. If you burn more than you eat, you lose weight. Period.
More medical myths on their way. I'll spread them out a bit, but most are from the same few sources. Then I'll move on to other things to show that everything you know is wrong.