8 Biggest Weight Loss Myths

Updated April 26, 2023.

Believing the wrong thing can set you down the wrong path for years. If you’ve been struggling hard with losing weight and keeping it off then maybe you are believing a myth about weight loss.

Here are the top 8 misconceptions about weight loss.

Myth #1 - There is a perfect weight loss diet.

Fact: You can lose weight while eating a wide range of different types of diets.

It would be much easier to check a box and say this is the diet to follow for everyone. After working with over a hundred women to help them lose weight sustainably I’ve seen a wide diversity of clients.

Some have specific dietary preferences and only eat organic while others have a smaller budget for food and only eat conventional items. Other clients have lots of free time for health and have an unlimited food budget while others have very little time to squeeze in their health and fitness.

I wouldn’t have been able to help my clients if I only followed a specific, perfect weight loss diet and forced them to eat a certain way. I wouldn’t be able to help them make small changes to improve their diet if there was only one diet to follow.

In all honesty, all diets can work for someone to lose weight. The human body can thrive and adapt to a large variety of foods. It’s possible to be healthy and lose weight whether you eat mostly meat, are a vegan, or eat little to no carbs or carbs multiple times a day.

What matters for a healthy weight loss diet is to eat a wide variety of mostly whole, minimally processed foods.

Myth #2 - Eating 5 to 6 small meals will boost your metabolism

Fact: Eating more frequently but smaller meals results in eating more calories.

Our bodies must use energy to digest and absorb the nutrients from our meals so it makes sense to think that if we ate more frequently then we would be burning more calories throughout the day right?

Not quite.

Eating six smaller meals will slightly increase your metabolism the same way eating three larger, calorically equal, meals will. Your body uses the same amount of energy to digest 1000 calories in 3 meals versus if you eat the same 1000 calories over 6 mini-meals.

Eating more often does not increase your metabolism throughout the day compared to eating less often for the same amount of calories. You don’t burn any more calories by eating more frequently.

Eating smaller frequent meals means you’ll be eating overall more daily calories.

Here’s why.

When your meals or snacks are too small they don’t contain enough protein or fat for your brain to register satiety or fullness. There is not enough food in your stomach to trigger a signal in your brain to turn off the hunger signal. What happens is that you will feel in-between kind of hungry but not quite hungry leading to just eating more.

Eating 3-4 meals a day improves your body’s ability to burn fat because you experience longer periods of being in a fasted state.

When you’re in a fasted state it means you are not digesting any food and your body is deriving its energy from stored energy sources such as fat. When you’re asleep your body is in a fasted state and to wake you up your body pulls energy from its fat stores because you haven’t had a meal in 8 hours.

If you keep eating around the clock you interfere with your body’s ability to burn fat.

Myth #3 - Cutting fat from your diet helps you lose fat

Fact: Healthy fats keep us from getting fat.

My mom instilled this fear of never eating animal fat because she thought it would mean I would get fat. We ate a lot of low-fat packaged foods in the 90s.

A study in the book Why We Get Fat show that even when Americans are eating fewer calories from fat the average waistline is still growing.

Illustrating how the percent fat consumed by Americans has decreased while the obesity and overweight rates have increased in the United States. Credit: CDC 2004 and CDC June 2010.

In the 1990s, the food trend was fat-free everything. People thought that fat-free foods were healthier for you and that’s what they ate, fueling the obesity epidemic.

What people didn’t know was that when manufacturers remove fat they removed the taste and texture from the food itself making it unappealing to eat.

To make it taste good to consumers they added taste and texture with other ingredients like sugars and other types of carbs. This increased the overall calories per serving compared to if they just left the fat in which was healthier.

Low-fat foods are often higher in calories and carbs than their full-fat counterparts which means more insulin-spiking, quick to digest sugars. Eating fat also keeps you full and satiated.

Fat does not make you fat or overweight, it’s a high-calorie diet that makes you overweight.

Myth #4 - It doesn’t matter what you eat as long as your count your calories

Fact: Not all calories have the same impact on your health and weight.

Calories are grouped into three types of macronutrients: protein, fat, and carbs. Each one goes through a different metabolic pathway to get digested, absorbed, and used by your body.

A protein calorie can boost your metabolism, help with feeling full, and reduce appetite and cravings, all while helping you maintain and build muscle mass.

While a carb calorie is used as your body’s main energy source and fuel for your cells.

Eating a diet of 75% of carbs or 75% of protein will have a very different effect on how you feel and how full you feel after your meals.

The quality of your calories also determines your health and your body fat while the amount of calories you eat and expend determines your weight.

Optimize your health by taking into account both the quality of your food sources and the quantity of food. Incorporate more whole, minimally processed foods into your diet.

**Example of increasing protein quality.**

For example, you can get your protein from processed deli meats or from chicken breasts but you’ll feel much healthier and be healthier if you ate more chicken breast than deli meats.

In addition, eating more whole minimally processed foods also helps you feel fuller with fewer calories. For example, with carbs, you’ll feel much fuller eating 400 calories from a baked potato versus 400 calories from refined carbs such as a candy bar.

Quantity and quality of calories are both important for weight loss and health.

Myth #5 - Cardio is better for weight loss

Fact: Cardio workouts burn more calories but only weight training workouts increase your calorie burn after your workout.

Excessive cardio is not only a waste of time but also unproductive.

If you’re only doing cardio and dieting for weight loss you will lose weight and lose muscle mass too, reducing your overall metabolism. This is why over 90% of people regain the lost weight within 3 years.

Their weight fluctuates because metabolically their bodies cannot handle the extra calories once they get back to eating a regular diet and cut back on exercising.

It’s a vicious dieting cycle that causes them to gain body fat because of improper dieting methods and lose muscle mass which decreases their overall metabolism.

Cardio will help with weight loss and help you become healthier but it shouldn’t be the only option. This is why I strongly encourage lifting weights over doing just cardio.

Myth #6 – You must cut out carbs to lose weight.

Fact: You can eat carbs and still lose weight.

Carbohydrates are a major source of energy for your body. The reason why people see dramatic weight loss after cutting out carbs is because of water loss.

Each gram of carbohydrate carries between 6 to 7 grams of water. When you cut out carbs in your diet your body releases water weight. This loss in water weight is where people think that you must do a keto diet or a low-carb diet to lose weight. Sure you will lose weight initially but it’s water weight, not body fat weight.

Low-carb diets are effective for weight loss but they must be balanced between the desire to lose weight and enough carbs to have the energy to go do your workout with enough intensity to burn calories and build muscle.

Low-carb diets that are poorly executed can negatively impact your goals. This means that your body will elevate your hunger hormones and you’ll feel low on energy, insomnia, and mood swings.

Carbs can be part of a well-balanced healthy weight-loss diet and can actually enhance your results.

Myth #7 – You need to always be hungry to lose weight.

Fact: You can eat more, feel full, and still lose weight.

If you’re starving yourself to lose weight you’re not going to reach your goals because your body will work against you.

Our bodies are dynamic machines that do not follow the math and logic of calorie reduction. We expect to know the exact date we’ll lose X number of pounds based on the calorie deficit and get frustrated when we cannot lose the last 5 lbs even if the math works out.

The number one goal of our body is survival and it will regulate based on what’s going on in our environment. If we starve ourselves, our body will respond by conserving calories and directing the energy to necessary body functions and burning fat is not one of them.

In fact, even if you’re exercising intensely and starving yourself your body will hold on to body fat. Starving yourself to lose weight will sabotage your weight loss goals because when you train your body will fuel itself by breaking down muscle mass. This is why some will see an increase in body fat the longer they diet.

Your sleep will be affected, raising your stress hormones causing you to have carb cravings and hold on to body fat. If you’re under eating your gym performance will be negatively affected.

Instead of starving yourself use a calculator to determine how much to eat to achieve your weight loss goals.

*Calorie Calculator* can be used to estimate the number of calories a person needs to consume each day. https://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html

Myth #8 – You will always lose weight at the same rate.

Fact: Weight loss is more like a roller coaster.

**What we think weight loss looks like versus reality.**

Weight loss doesn’t happen based on a calculated equation. If it did, it would be much less frustrating.

At the beginning, weight loss can happen much faster and more consistently because you have more weight to lose and by reducing calories you’re introducing a new stimulus for your body.

Also, the amount of bodyfat you have determines how quickly you will lose weight because body fat releases a hormone called leptin that influences your hunger hormones and metabolism. Leptin is a hormone that suppresses hunger by providing a sensation of satiety.

When the amount of bodyfat decreases the overall amount of leptin in the bloodstream is reduced signaling to your body to think that you are starving. This stimulates intense hunger and boosts your appetite leading eating more food.

Leptin levels are directly correlated to the amount of bodyfat you have. This is why it gets harder to lose the last few pounds, you’re working against your hormones to maintain a normal weight on a long-term basis.

Eight weight loss facts that will help you lose weight:

You can lose weight while eating a wide range of different types of diets
Diets can change and evolve over time depending on weight loss goals, dietary restrictions and budget. What matters for a healthy weight loss diet is to eat a wide variety of mostly whole, minimally processed foods.
Eating more often doesn’t boost your metabolism
Your body uses the same amount of energy to digest 1000 calories in 3 meals versus if you eat the same 1000 calories over 6 mini-meals. If you keep eating around the clock you will interfere with your body’s ability to burn fat.
Eating fat doesn’t make you fat or overweight
Even when Americans are eating fewer calories from fat the average waistline is still growing. Low-fat foods are often higher in calories and carbs than their full-fat counterparts which means more insulin-spiking, quick to digest sugars.
Not all calories are created equal
The quality of your calories also determines your health and your body fat while the amount of calories you eat and expend determines your weight. Optimize your health by taking into account both the quality of your food sources and the quantity of food.
Cardio can help you with weight loss but it shouldn’t be your only option
Cardio workouts burn more calories but only weight training workouts increase your calorie burn after your workout. Excessive cardio is not only a waste of time but also unproductive.
You can eat carbs and still lose weight
Carbohydrates are a major source of energy for your body and can be part of a well-balanced healthy weight-loss diet that can enhance your results. Low-carb diets that are poorly executed can negatively impact your goals.
You can eat more, feel full, and still lose weight.
You won’t reach your goals if you are starving yourself because your body will respond to starvation by conserving calories and directing the energy to necessary body functions and burning fat is not one of them.
Weight loss is like a rollercoaster.
Weight loss doesn’t happen based on a calculated equation. Our bodies are dynamic machines that do not follow the math and logic of calorie reduction.