Three Myths About a Healthy Fitness Lifestyle

If you’re going to achieve anything in life, you first have to be informed on the topic. This means learning everything you can about your craft, your hobbies, your passions. Fitness can fall into all three of these categories. To begin with, it usually develops out of a hobby. You might start out via an obligation to reduce your waistline, to improve your health, or for a more direct medical reason. Perhaps you just want to get stronger or live a healthy, fitness lifestyle. Sounds as good as any. When you start becoming familiar with the routine and feel as though you could do more, it can then develop into a passion.

This means you do it for the sake of doing it, as a regular fixture; becoming part of your lifestyle. Then, over time, it will become a craft. Not in the kind of profitable manner or artistic manner in which we think of it, but rather something we wish to improve, a basic lifestyle habit that we wish to continue and enjoy.

But to move from hobby to passion, from passion to craft, you have to give yourself the best opportunity to succeed. This includes dispelling myths. For that reason, let us help you get started with three such myths.

Rest is Not an Option

When we think of an active, healthy fit lifestyle, it’s easy to conceptualize someone walking around a city all day, like New York. Perhaps we imagine them working as a courier, or in a job that requires the person to be outdoors. But often, that’s not the case. While jobs like these can be beneficial to a healthy lifestyle, they are not the only way to live actively. In fact, the assumption that you need to be continually active is a false one.

And…

A healthy fitness lifestyle is nothing if you cannot rest on certain days during the week. What matters is how you use your available time in the day to improve your overall conditioning. For example, many have experienced the benefits of HIIT, which is high Intensity Interval training. This might include sprinting for one minute on a treadmill, followed by walking for two minutes to recover and then repeat. Because of the intensity of exercise, you needn’t commit to low-impact activity.

On top of that, it’s not the case that going to the gym means you will need to go each week for the rest of your life or lose all of your gains. Active recovery periods, drop-off weeks for weightlifting, and the ability to rest and get more high-quality sleep, is essential if you hope to improve the current version of yourself.

Of course, you shouldn’t pursue a fitness lifestyle motivated only by how and when you might justify your rest. Thinking that this is an impossible task that could never be achieved should you choose to get healthy is not the case. In fact, when you’re in shape, rest becomes much more satisfying, and much more restorative. Proper recovery is a key component in the mix. That sounds like a win-win.

Do You Really Need Equipment on Your Journey?

For some reason, the primal nature of exercise or weightlifting convinces some people that the most raw means of getting in shape are always the best. Never mind that ergonomically designed piece of exercise equipment, lifting heavy things outside all day is the real way to build muscle! Never mind the treadmill’s convenience and ease of use, running outside will always be superior in the minds of some runners.

This somewhat-sprinkling of truth and myth can lead some people to think they need to go without the bare essentials should they actually be completing the work well. To some extent, this can be healthy. For example, wearing a “squat suit” to perform a power lift is not for everyone. It is needed by some, but might be overkill for a novice trying to learn correct squatting technique. For the exercise newbie, sweat pants, sturdy shoes and a t-shirt will suffice. Keep it simple. Consider your needs. When you do this, you might find a simple workout was all that you needed to keep yourself in check.

Women & Weight Training

One of the more tragic things about the fitness community is how easily incorrect information can be pushed and accepted. One of the largest myths routinely asked about is how women can fair if deciding to embark on a weight training program. There is only one answer – well. While there are bodybuilders who happen to be women, many just starting out might not have the desire to get to that level. In fact, even if you had a masculine body, lifting weights as a novice will never accidentally grant you a hugely muscular frame such as that. Your testosterone levels are much less than that of a man, and even if they were the same, accidentally becoming that muscular does not happen. It takes years and years of effort and clean eating.

Women looking to get involved in weight lifting should check out a strength program with compound lifts and use the Jefit app to track workouts. The benefits you stand to gain are a slender, stronger, leaner body type. To that extent, weightlifting can be a tremendous gift.

With the advice presented here, we hope to have dispelled three common myths regarding living a healthy lifestyle.

Stay Strong Together

The Jefit app comes equipped with an advanced customizable workout planner and training log. The app also has ability to track data, offer audio cues, and has a feature to share workouts with friends. Take advantage of Jefit’s exercise database for your strength workouts. Visit our members-only Facebook group. Connect with like-minded people, share tips, and advice to help get closer to reaching your fitness goals.

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Michael Wood, CSCS

Michael Wood, CSCS, is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and Content Manager for JeFit app. Michael is a former Assistant Strength & Conditioning Coach at the University of Connecticut and Exercise Physiologist at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. He is the Founder of Michael Wood Fitness, named twice to "Top 100 Trainers in America" by Men's Journal and voted Best of Boston by Boston Magazine. Michael previously taught at the University of Connecticut and Boston University. He is the author of TBC30: 6 Steps to a Stronger, Healthier You.