Top mistakes to avoid on your fitness journey
Here are some mistakes that might be stopping you from reaching your fitness goals.
Making fitness a part of your lifestyle is one of the keys to living a long and healthy life. No matter your age, being physically active can help you live a better and happier life, providing both short-term and long-term health benefits. Although we may all be aware of the advantages, it may often be intimidating to begin a new fitness path, and far too frequently people give up. Although maintaining general health is something we should all strive for, it is especially important when beginning a fitness routine. Numerous individuals begin their fitness journeys without a clear understanding of what they're doing. As a result, people frequently commit mistakes that hinder their efforts to get fit. (Also read: 5 signs your relationship with exercise is unhealthy)
Fitness Coach, Gwen, shared on her Instagram account the mistakes people should avoid on their fitness journey.
Eating 100% whole food plant-based diet to build muscle
- Whole foods are good for recovery, but they are too seriously lacking in protein and healthy fats, which are essential for muscle building and recovery.
- Learning how to utilize processed foods with strategy in your diet will be a better approach if you have fitness goals. These foods include faux meats, protein powders and bars and seitan, and other soy products like tofu and tempeh.
- Trying to eat 100% WFPB to build muscle with flexible dieting you learn that strategically using processed foods will actually give you better results. All diets require a mix of processed foods and supplementation to see optimal results.
The fat you eat is the fat you wear
- The fat you eat is the fat you wear has haunted many vegans on their weight loss and fitness journey. The misconception that consuming fats or oils causes automatic weight gain has no scientific backing behind it.
- The only way that your body will store fat is if you are consuming more calories than you’re burning. Fats play a vital role in many metabolic functions and do not need to be eliminated in order to see optimal results.
- No matter what your macro breakdown is but when it comes to weight gain or weight loss calories are king, not specific macronutrients.
- Fat is essential for overall health and well-being and should not be neglected in your diet.
Doing HIIT cardio to build muscle
- High-intensity interval training (HIIT) cardio puts your body in a catabolic state which breaks down your lean tissue which is not beneficial for changing your body composition.
- HIIT cardio will not help you build muscle and increase your body mass ratio. It puts your body in a catabolic state where you were actually sacrificing leg tissue in order to just simply burn calories.
- HIIT it’s also extremely systemically taxing on your central nervous system and can greatly affect training interference which will not help you build muscle. It also tends to make individuals ravenous which makes staying in a calorie deficit even more difficult which is optimally the bottom line when it comes to fat loss.