COLUMN: Common health and fitness myths that just aren't right'¦

People are becoming more health conscious year on year, and we are being continuously bombarded with apparent '˜facts', '˜stats' and '˜scientific knowledge' surrounding the best ways to achieve this. Unfortunately, a lot of these common facts and stats are not what they seem and could be stopping you from working towards and achieving your health and fitness goals. In addition, these myths could have also stopped you doing things for completely the wrong reasons.

In addition, these myths could have also stopped you doing things for completely the wrong reasons.

‘’Working out once or twice a week is sufficient to stay fit and healthy’’

If only it was this easy. This is a myth passed round particularly by young adults, that unfortunately doesn’t hold much truth. Although exercising once or twice a week will do no harm, it won’t be enough to sustain or improve your current health and fitness. To get the gains you want and to achieve your targets you should be aiming to exercise 3-5 times a week.

Exercising 3-5 times a week will help you achieve your targets.

“Exercising is the only thing needed to lose weight”

Of course, exercise can play a key role in helping people achieve their dream weights, however exercise can sometimes almost become irrelevant if people’s eating habits and diets are poor. Eating healthily is the most important step in weight loss, and once this happens, there will be dramatic improvements seen when exercising.

“Eating late at night causes weight gain”

The key understanding here is not related to the ‘when’ but to the ‘what’. The common misconception is that eating late is bad for you, however this really isn’t the case. Eating more than your body needs will cause weight gain whether its 5pm or 9pm, so people can be free to eat whenever they wish, but to stop weight gain healthy snacks are probably best.