Mythbusting

Whenever you start a diet plan, you'll find that many people are always quick to give you unsolicited advice about what you should and shouldn't be eating and drinking, in what quantities and when. This article will cover some of these most popular myths, and why you should disregard them on your weight loss journey.

Most of the people advancing these myths mean well, but they have idea what they're talking about and most of their advice is flat out wrong. Usually, they arrived at these beliefs because they glommed onto some clickbait article because it fits nicely into their list of excuses for why their last diet failed, or it runs down some food that they weirdly resent. It becomes an emotional thing for them, so don't bother trying to talk them out of it. Knowing that you can safely disregard their disinformation is enough.

Diet Soda Makes You Fat

This is a mathematical impossibility. Ultimately, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. Your body will either get what it needs to run at your activity levels and store the rest, or it'll pull whatever it didn't get from calorie intake out of your fat reserves. Diet soda has zero calories. Your body will store none of it.

Now, the nutrients and sense of fullness you receive from different types of foods will vary wildly and may impact your tendency to overeat (like crushing a bag of Doritos vs trying to eat an entire pork loin), but the calorie math is what it is.

I've heard the reports that diet sodas will make you crave more foods and that you may actually lose more weight with regular soda, but I haven't found any of that to be true. In fact, I find that diet soda satisfies a lot of my sweet tooth cravings. This study sounds a lot to me like an excuse to drink regular soda, which should not be a part of your plan unless you can find room for it in your budget. It's difficult but possible. You can have anything you want in certain quantities.

Diet soda *may* have some other health drawbacks, such as being linked to cancer and so on. But, being overweight also comes with a definite link to a whole smorgasbord of health risks. So my advice is, as long as you're logging your food, drink it if you got it.

Eating at Night Makes You Fatter

Another bunch of crap. The only way this is true is if you're eating calories at night that you didn't intend to eat at all on a particular day. A hot fudge Sunday eaten at midnight vs noon makes no difference on the scale the next morning. If your late night hunger pangs are horrible and you can plan a nice calorie deficit going into bedtime, by all means do that. Save all your worst indulgences for that time if that's what you crave and you plan for it in your calorie budget.

My Age/Gender Makes It Extremely Difficult

This blog is geared towards men, but it'll work just as well for women. Don't tell them that, though. They all seem to think that we have some yet-to-be-found magic fat burning gene that remains dormant until we decide to activate it. I hear similar things from older people.

Older people and women have less lean muscle mass than a young-ish guys, so their BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is lower. Your BMR is body's minimum daily burn rate for keeping you alive - ie, how many calories you burn if you don't get out of bed. Yes, it is higher in men, but men also have a lot more body fat to lose. A 40 pound weight loss looks great on me, but it'd bring many women to death's doorstep. They tend to look at absolute instead of relative weight loss when they shouldn't. They may only have 20 pounds to lose, but 20 pounds off of me was only about 10% of my body weight. It might be 15-17% of theirs.

Fruits Contain Sugar So Don't Overdo It

Bull. Eat as much fruit as you want. Fruits contain natural sugars, are pretty low calorie and help keep your hunger in check. They're not as budget neutral as vegetables but a close second. It's almost impossible to overeat fruit, so just keep them in you food log but have some whenever you're hungry between meals.