3 sporty myths unveiled

Fit & Training door thijs

At #FITGIRLCODE we want to inspire and motivate women all over the world to find the lifestyle that fits their personality. We'll answer all of your personal messages with great care and love. Quite often, we're meeting up with the entire team in order to provide you a good answer. There are some reoccuring topics and we think it's important to invalidate some fairy tales and myths about certain of these topics. So here we go:

"I'm pretty content with my body. However, I don't like the fat on my tummy. How do I get rid of this fat as fast as possible?"

Of course, it would be ideal to just lose weight in the problem areas of your body. Unfortunately, real life doesn't work that way. People often claim that local fat burning is possible by training the local areas of the problem area and by adding cardio training. It is often believed that by providing extra training for your tummy by means of ab exercises, you could burn fat on that particular place of your body and cardio training would support this. Unfortunately, local training is not the same as local fat burning. You can train you ab muscles separately, but it doesn't effect your tummy fat. If you want to lose weight in a specific area you have to train your whole body. Overall, the burning of nutrients happens in the muscles. This means that the more muscles you have, the more you will burn. Your metabolism makes sure of that, because the more muscles you have, the more calories you burn. If you change your food intake and eat less calories than you use, your body will use its own fat reserve. Hence, you will lose weight. Not only on your stomach, but everywhere. When you see your results for the first time, you have to realize that it's different for every single woman. Your BFFF might lose weight in different places than you will. So don't worry too much about it, this is how mother nature invented the world! ;)

"In about 2 weeks I'm going on holiday and I want to lose 5 kilo before that time. How do I do this?"

Living healthy doesn't have an effect if you only do it when you feel like it. If you start with a healthy lifestyle, you have to keep up, otherwise you'll have to start all over. We want to motivate our community to integrate healthy food and exercises in their lifestyle, instead of focusing on (crash)diets, detoxing and slimming pills. It might take a while, but it's a durable solution for - in this case- losing weight. Crashdiets and slimming pills might cause your body to lose weight in a short period of time, but it also causes a lot of health risks. Your body is short on nutrients and this causes you to be underfed. Next to it, your muscles will break down because you don't get enough nutrients.

Did you know that there is an average of 200 mg of cafeine in slimming pills? One Red Bull contains 80 mg. That explains why you're not feeling hungry the whole day. Moreover, these kind of fast ways to lose weight do not change your behavior. And that's what it's all about; changing and adjusting your habits!

"I'm scared that I'm going to look like the feminine version of Arnold Schwarzenegger when I'm doing strength training. How do I avoid this?"

Guy droog, personal trainer and ambassador of #FITGIRLCODE, gets these questions on a daily basis. He wants to dismiss this myth. For a woman, it's physically impossible to become just as muscled as a man. This is because women don't have the same hormonal tendency as men. Testosteron is the hormone that causes an increase in muscles and women only have a fraction of this hormone in comparison to men. So, the fear to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger with a ponytail is unnecessary! If you train heavy, you will look better by the day. As long as you stay away from the anabols, because this is the reason why the myth of women with enormous muscles exists. Read more here about the advantages of strength training for women.