"7 ways to tone your inner thighs... You won't be able to walk the day after, but your legs will look great!"
"waist trimming workout"
"7 best exercises to blast leg fat"
"4 exercises to lose your love handles"
"erase arm flab fast!"
"exercises to fix the arm pit pooch"
"3 day military diet. apparently you can lose up to 10 lbs in 3 days, with this special diet. take a four day break and do it again until you've achieved your goal... pinner checked it with her medic hub and he said its good to try."
"7 day cleanse= lose 10-17 lbs. This is an amazing 7 day meal plan/guide to lose pounds and totally cleanse your body"
"website run by 2 professional trainers and nutritionists..."
"best exercises to get rid of saddle bags"
"8 moves to perk up your boobs"
"get rid of muffin top"
"remove fat deposits from inner thigh, above the knee, and inner knee"
If any of the above pin quotes sound familiar to you, please do yourself a favor and go delete them from your boards and brain now. I'll wait...
These sound great, but all have hidden in them somewhere an exercise myth aimed at unsuspecting women. Let's kick some exercise myth butt.
1) Spot loss-- By far the most rampant are the items stating things like "get rid of muffin top/saddle bags/love handles/leg fat/ whatever embarrassing part you have with these 7 (the divine number, no less) awesome exercise moves" You can NOT do 500 bazillion crunches and magically have a flat washboard stomach, or magically change any other flabby part. Let me start with the physiology: fat cells and muscle cells are completely different. You are born with a certain number of fat and muscle cells. You can eat yourself into more fat cells if you wish. You cannot make more muscle cells. Fat cells grow larger with increased energy (food) intake and shrink smaller with decreased energy (food) intake. Also muscle cells grow larger with increased use (exercise) and shrink smaller with decreased use (exercise). Therefore, you cannot physiologically "lose" muscle or fat. With that said, if you want the fat cells to shrink, you have less energy (food) intake. Your body is not selective at where it stores the excess energy, creating fatter fat cells. A woman is born with more fat cells to begin with than a man (not fair!) and also in certain locations for evolutionary reasons I won't go into. These are our problem areas, which all the above magic exercises are targeting. Read the above one more time. Notice that exercise is related to muscle cells and food is related to fat cells. Here is the point of all the above: if you want to effect fat, you have to adjust your food intake. Doing 500 bazillion crunches will give you beautiful abs, but if you have 5 inches of fat fat cells on top of them, you won't see the washboard look!
Fat cells cartoon
Fat cell under a microscope
Muscle cell growing (hypertrophy) cartoon
Muscle cells under microscope
Ok, I think that's it for today. Plenty to chew on, eh? Check back. In a few days, I'll throw up Myth #2!
Who in the world do I think I am?! My name is Bria, PT, DPT (Physical Therapist, Doctor of Physical Therapy.) Prior to the PT gig, I was one of those uncredentialed personal trainers with a science degree.
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