I remember, as a child, burning my finger on a hot frying pan and my mother putting butter on it to stop the burning. However, little did she know that it actually served to fuel the burning of my finger! Why did she use butter? Because that’s what her mother did it, that’s what her mother before her did it, and so on. It’s easy to fall into the myth trap: A friend passes along a tip, and then you pass it on to several individuals you know. One day you hear the same tip repeated, so you figure it must be true. Today, we know that if you burn your finger on a hot frying pan you should hold it under cold running water to stop the burning. Myths carry on over time until we learn that that’s all they are – Myths!

Myths and half-truths are still abundant in the fitness world today (even though good science has proven them to be falsehoods). Just as my mother never took the time to find out if butter really helped relieve the pain of a burning finger, many individuals never take the time to investigate what someone tells them about a fitness belief. And some of these myths may be keeping you from getting the workout you need.

As boomers, we need to base strength and fitness programs on sound scientific evidence in order to maximize our time spent on staying healthy. So let’s cut through some of these myths and get to the truth of the matter.

Myth #1; Muscle turns into fat when you stop working out:

This is one of the oldest myths in the fitness world and completely false; muscle cannot turn into fat and fat cannot turn into muscle – they are two different body tissues. How did this myth come about? In the early days of fitness, men especially, would weight train to increase muscle size which also required eating more calories. When these individuals stopped working out, their muscles began to atrophy, reducing in size and strength. However, they did not take into consideration that their bodies no longer needed the volume of calories they were consuming while training. Those extra calories that were used as fuel while they were training was then stored as fat because the body no longer required that much food. The outward appearance seems as though their hard earned muscle was turning into fat, but the reality is that their bodies were getting fatter because they were taking in more than needed.

If you cut back on your training, or stop, you must reduce your calorie consumption because your body will store those excess calories as fat.

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