Today we want to talk to you about some of the top myths that we find in the fitness and sports nutrition industry

Protein bad for your kidney

Protein in general is bad for your kidneys. We actually did a study we published it last year in which we gave male bodybuilders a high protein diet up to about 3.3 grams per kilo and there were no harmful effects on kidneys on their liver and even their blood lipids were perfectly fine.

Protein makes your bone brittle

Protein is that it leeches calcium from your bones and makes your bones brittle. This again is probably second to the protein harming your kidneys myth. We have actually done studies looking at trained women who consumed a high protein diet and have found that their bone mineral density doesn’t even change so the fact that people claim that it demineralized as your bone has no basis in fact.

Lactate makes your muscle sore

One of the more amusing myths this is something you hear in the gym a lot the reason your source because you’re building up a lot of lactic acid in your muscles and and actually massage therapists love saying well I’m gonna massage the lactic acid out of your muscles so you won’t be sore. Well that couldn’t be farther from the truth because the fact of the matter is lactic acid or lactate is actually the correct word has nothing to do with delayed onset muscle soreness. Delayed onset muscle soreness is due primarily to eccentric loading ordinate doing negatives or doing unaccustomed exercise and you end up basically causing micro-tears and your muscle fibers. What lactate is is basically a fuel source your heart uses it your brain uses it your muscle uses it even your kidneys use it as fuel so lactate is not a matter of metabolic poison it doesn’t cause soreness and in fact it’s something that your body loves to use as fuel.

There’s a “Best” diet for fat loss

This issue of you know the best kind of diet for losing a weight or for promoting better body composition and this is basically how it works. If you get a low fat high carb diet and compare it to a high fat low carb diet but if you keep protein the same and you drop total calories the amount of fat loss and weight loss is pretty much the same.

Taking creatine dehydrates you

That if you take creatine monohydrate it causes cramps and dehydration and what’s interesting is there been studies of people actually exercising in the heat and that folks you take creates and actually perform better in the heat. So the idea that it causes cramps or dehydration has no basis when you look at the scientific literature.

Women automatically get huge form lifting weight

It is really kind of amusing because there’s like millions of college guys out there who trying to gain as much weight as possible from lifting and eating and they’re having a hard time doing it yet these little petite women who think if they lit lift a 5-pound pink dumbbell will suddenly get gargantuan muscles when in fact it is very difficult for anyone and specifically women to put on muscle mass or lean body mass so the idea that you suddenly will just get big and muscular for look for lifting weights and for women just has no basis in fact or reality.

Artificial sweeteners are not safe

What’s interesting is there is a a robust amount of data to show that these artificial sweeteners are indeed safe now if you look at some of the animal data when they give them gargantuan amounts of these artificial sweeteners certainly it’ll cause problems but then the normal amounts that humans consume there’s no reason to believe that they cause any harm and in fact they could serve as substitutes for consuming sugar filled foods or sugar filled beverages because in the end calories still matter.

Food quality over food quantity

The idea that if you just eat healthy but you’d eat as much as you want it doesn’t matter if you’re eating five or 10,000 calories well that’s just not true first of all calories matter and food quality matters you can’t just ignore one and say the other the other one’s the only important one if you’re overeating 5,000 calories whether it’s healthy food you’re eating like 20 avocados a day you’re gonna put on body fat now here’s a caveat to that if you’re just overeating a little bit let’s say on protein let’s say 300 calories or 400 calories a day it’s energetically very difficult for your body to put on fat at least that’s from the limited data that that we published through our lab in the last few years but if you’re overeating on carbs and fat calories clearly matter you can’t just sit down with a big jar of peanut butter eat it all day and expect not to gain any weight

Protein intake post workout

After you’re done training should you consume your 20 grams or 30 or 40 grams of protein post-workout or can you just go home wait an hour wait two hours or whatever. Now certainly what some people refer to as the anabolic window lasts for many hours after you workout. So the idea is that well we don’t have to consume anything immediately after we train because we have all these hours after we workout. Well oddly enough that’s actually the wrong way to look at it the question that needs to be asked is this. What value or what benefit is there to not eating what value or benefit is there to not consuming a protein post-workout and the answer to that is none there’s absolutely no value to it so the pragmatic answer to that is when you’re done training whether it’s lifting whether you’ve done your cardio is get that 20 to 40 gram shake immediately post-workout because there’s a possible benefit to it and there’s no drawback to it.

Caffeine is a diuretic

What’s interesting is if you look at the data on exercise in caffeine, we know that caffeine is a very strong organic aid. Meaning it helps exercise performance does it cause you to urinate more or lose fluid and really if anything it might have a very mild diuretic fact but in terms of whether or not it affects adversely affects performance there’s no evidence for that so in general caffeine it is not a diuretic some people think though if you consume it with coffee like let’s say high-dose caffeine it might induce a slight effect but in general the data seems to show that caffeine is not a diuretic.

Exercise is the best for weight loss

What’s interesting is that if you look at this data or the studies on exercise alone. It’s actually a poor way to lose weight or a poor way to lose fat and the reason that is is most people don’t exercise enough to matter. It’s not like you’re riding a bike for two three or four hours a day you might go to the gym for thirty minutes maybe sixty minutes. You’re actually not burning that many calories so what’s the primary driver of fat loss or body weight loss the primary drivers actually diet because let’s face it if you exercise hard let’s say you’re in the gym for an hour you might burn 300 maybe 400 calories. That’s easy to replace now if you change your diet throughout the day it’s much easier to create a caloric deficit to lose fat mass than it is from exercise alone. So the idea that all you got to do is exercise more or change the way you exercise is it really an efficient way to lose body weight that’s not an efficient way to lose fat.