This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at WM chapter.
Whenever I’m at the gym, I spot at least one person giving 110%, pushing themselves to their limits in an effort to get in shape and/or to increase their fitness level. They are hitting the gym daily and working out for hours, but somehow they still look the same from month to month. You might ask yourself, “What is going on here?” So many people are “dieting,” hiring trainers, and routinely going to the gym, but their results are just not showing. Unfortunately, common but fixable mistakes are preventing them from getting optimum results. If we can clear these misconceptions up, and show people what they are doing wrong, then their hard work may be visible!
1. Drinking a Sports Drink Before, During and After Workouts
A common misconception with all the advertisements for sports drinks on TV is that they are the “new” water. They lead you to believe that you should be drinking it almost as much as you should water. This is WRONG! Essentially what you are doing my drinking sports drinks while working out is going to sugar for energy. Now, that is okay if you are an athlete spending hours doing high endurance training and need ongoing fuel. However, your average person is usually at the gym trying to burn fat or maintain their weight, so it does not make sense to me gulping sugar into your system while working out. Water is much better choice. It also ensures that you are burning fat rather than the sugar you just pumped into your body.
2. Understanding Eating Right
Have you ever eaten a burger and fries or overindulged with desserts after the gym and tried to justify this by telling yourself, “I am allowed to eat this because I just worked out.” And, have you also asked yourself why you are not seeing the results that you were hoping for? People often make the mistake of going overboard when it comes to eating after they exercise. Yes, if you live an active lifestyle, you can splurge a bit more here and there, but don’t go too crazy. It would be a shame to burn 300 calories at the gym and then eat them all back right afterwards. Workouts do make us really hungry, but it’s best to try to still opt for healthier meals so that you get better results.
3. More isn’t better, being smart is!
A lot of people get the idea that working out for longer (let’s say an hour versus a half hour), will give them a better work out. False. Just because you work out for an hour doesn’t mean your workout will be effective; you could be exercising at an easy to moderate pace and not pushing yourself to where your cardio-respiratory fitness will improve. You can alternate cardio and strength training every other day for only 30 minutes (or 3-ten minute increments) each day at a high intensity level. For example, you could run intervals for 15 minutes and power walk for the remaining time one day, and do musculoskeletal workouts that work the major muscle groups such as squats, lunges, lifting, pushups and crunches the next day. Remember it is not about how many calories you burn during a workout, what matters more is how much fat you burn, and short and intense workouts stimulate fat burn and muscle building.
4. Vanilla versus Double Fudge Brownie Sundaes
If given the choice between plain vanilla ice cream or a double fudge brownie sundae, most of us would opt for the latter. Keep this in mind when it comes to working out. Don’t bore yourself my doing the same exact exercises every single time you go to the gym. Mix it up! You can alternate between running, biking, power walking, and doing exercise classes each week, giving yourself some variety. This will help make exercising more enjoyable and increase your likehood of doing it. By mixing things up, you are constantly working other major muscle groups that you wouldn’t normal be working if you didn’t add variation to your routine.
5. Be realistic!
“I need to lose five pounds before formal next week!” I am sure a good amount of you can think of at least one time when you wanted to lose x amount of weight in a given (most likely an unrealistically short) amount of time. We tend to get ahead of ourselves when it comes to setting fitness goals. Patience is key because results are not immediate. Save yourself the stress and worries of compulsively looking in the mirror or checking the scale. It is best to have a weekly follow up, so that you can better see the gradual changes. Doing this will help you focus more on getting into an exercise routine and think about fitness in the long run. If you dwell on the urgency of results, you are setting yourself up for disappointment, which puts a damper on your motivation. This leads people giving up or stopping exercise right after they reach their goal, eventually bringing them back to square one.
These are just some of the many, simple but impacting, mistakes that people make when working out.
