DustinKWilliams.com

 

 

Hey, what’s up, guys? I wanted to do a short, little video here for you. I want to talk a little bit about what I believe are the five biggest nutrition myths right now that’s going around. You get conflicting information all over the place all the time. Sometimes it’s just really, really tough to know what’s accurate, what’s not accurate because you can just do a little Google search and your mind will be blown about the different information and the evidence supporting everything that they’re claiming about these nutritional myths. I wanted to talk to you about, in my opinion, probably five, of the biggest ones right now that I’m dealing with on a regular basis with my clients.

The first one, it might surprise you just a little bit … several of these might actually surprise you, but the first one that I want to talk about is the fact that salt is bad for you. I hear this on regular basis, “I shouldn’t eat salt, I don’t need salt. I gotta cut salt out.” Here’s the thing. Salt is actually an essential mineral and we need it in our diets. Don’t get me wrong, anything in excess, anything that we eat too much of can be bad for you, and salt is definitely no exception to that rule. But if you’re actually focused on eating more wholefoods, staying away from more the processed stuff, you definitely don’t need to worry about getting too much salt in on your diet. We need salt for a lot of reasons. It plays lot of roles and a lot of different functions in our body and it’s a very, very important mineral that we need to get in. There’s only been about, I want to say 9% to 12% roughly where salt was linked back to hypertension. If you actually have salt-induced hypertension, which like I said, is pretty low, a lot lower than what a lot of people thought that it was prior, then you may want to avoid more salty foods. Otherwise, eat the salt, get a lot of health benefits that comes from it, all right?

Second thing that I want to talk about is detoxes. Detoxes are huge right now. There’s a lot of people going on, we’ve got celebrities spouting them off all over the place. Here’s the thing. When it comes to the science behind it, there’s really not any. For the most part, there’s not any science that’s pushing the fact that these detoxes really do anything more for our body than just stop eating crap. For the most part, if we start eating, again, more whole, more nutritious foods, things that are packed with vitamins and minerals, these are the types of foods that we want to try to start eating on a more regular basis. Our body is designed to detox itself. Here’s the thing. Don’t worry about the detox, save your money and I guarantee you that eating foods that are packed full of lots of vitamins and minerals probably taste way better than the detox diets do, as well.

The third thing is, is don’t eat before bed. This is what I hear all the time. “I gotta stop eating by six or seven o’clock and not eat before I go to bed.” Well, that’s not necessarily accurate, either. If you eat before bed, it’s only going to be a problem if eating before bed actually causes you to eat more than what you would need in a typical day. What matters most is actually the total amount of calories that you’re taking in throughout the day, more so than the actual timing of whenever it comes in. If you are eating right before you go to bed, but you’re not eating more calories than what you actually need for the day, then you don’t have to worry about eating right before you go to bed. I’ve had quite a few clients, myself included that eat right before bed based on their schedule, and as long as they’re staying within a good calorie range, they still lose weight.

From there, this one’s probably my favorite one that I deal with on a regular basis and I hear all the time. Sugar is the devil. No, it’s not. Sugar is definitely not the devil. This is what we do in the fitness and nutrition industry. We pick something once every few years and we just demonize it. We’ve demonize saturated fat, we’ve demonize salt, we’ve talked about egg yolks, we’ve talked about red meat causing cancer. Too much protein is bad for you. We’ve talked about so many things and, on a regular basis, we try to find something and we just say, “This is terrible. This is terrible, stay away from it.”

You know what? Again, it goes back to anything in excess can be bad for you. The majority of the studies out there on sugar that show that sugar is bad, most of those is whenever you’re eating sugar in excess of the total amount of calories that you need. Sugar does not actually have to be a bad thing. I’ll ask people on a regular basis, “So sugar is bad for you, right?” “Oh, yeah.” “Well, fruit. What about fruit? Is that good for you?” “Well, yeah, of course, fruit’s good for you, lots of vitamins and minerals.” “Well, guess what fruit is. Fruit’s sugar.” I’m not sitting here telling you to go out and eat all sort of cakes and candies and things along those lines, but sugar isn’t bad and there’s plenty of studies out there that show that you can lose just as much fat and be just as healthy having sugar in your diet as without.

The last one I want to talk about that I deal with on a regular basis, as well, is that if you don’t eat protein as soon as you are done with your workout then you’ve wasted your workout. There’s no truth behind this whatsoever. Ultimately, not to say that taking in protein within an hour or two hours of a training workout isn’t going to be beneficial, because there can be some benefit to it. What truly matters most is the amount of protein that you get in throughout the day. Worry less about the amount of protein you take in after your workout. So many people get focused on, “I gotta get my protein shake within 60 minutes of a workout,” if that’s part of your routine, there’s nothing wrong with that, but don’t feel like it’s the most important part, or the most important aspect of your training session, because it is by far not the most important aspect. Getting in the total amount of protein that your body’s going to need throughout the day, throughout the week, as you’re doing the strength training is going to be way more important.

I hope these have helped you. If you guys have any comments or questions, feel free to comment, shoot me an email, let me know, but I hope this helps out. Good luck.