17. Lift Without Fear: 6 Fitness Myths That Might Be Holding You Back

Ready to trade pressure for principles? We’re unpacking six stubborn fitness myths that hold women back and replacing them with clear, science-backed steps you can actually use. From the fear of “getting bulky” to the false promise of spot reduction, we walk through what really changes your body: strength, protein, recovery, and consistency.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs some gym peace of mind, and drop a review telling us which myth you’re letting go of next.

I am happy we can share this journey of levelling up, together. See you next week!

- Alita <3

https://vitawithalita.buzzsprout.com

Chapters

• 0:03 Welcome And Word Of The Day
• 0:39 Myth 1: Lifting Makes You Bulky
• 3:20 Myth 2: Eat Less To Lose Weight
• 5:12 Myth 3: More Cardio Equals More Fat Loss
• 7:10 Myth 4: Soreness Proves A Good Workout
• 9:01 Myth 5: Train Daily Or Lose Progress
• 12:01 Myth 6: Spot Reduction Works
• 14:46 Liberosis Takeaways And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:03

Täällä on paretama toto.

SPEAKER_00: 0:25

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to Vita with Alita. This is the podcast where we talk real fitness, real health, and real confidence for young women. Today, we're busting the biggest fitness myths holding women back. The ones that stress you out, confuse you, or just make you avoid strength training altogether. And as always, before we start, you know I love a word of the day. So today's is liberosis. L-I-B-E-R-O-S-I-S Liberosis. It means the desire to care less about unnecessary pressures and expectations. Liberosis is perfect today because we're letting go of the myths, the rules, and the shoulds, and focusing on what actually works for your body and as always backed by science. So let's get right into it. Myth numero uno lifting weights will make you bulky. This myth is so common, and here's the science. Women just have much lower testosterone than men, so significant muscle bulk is extremely unlikely. A review in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that women's resistance training mostly builds lean muscle and helps with fat loss, not the bulk. So benefits of lifting weights include boosting your bone density, so you're strengthening your bones, reducing the risk of osteoporosis, which for us women increases so much as we age, especially after menopause, higher metabolism, so you get more muscle, higher resting metabolic rate. Who doesn't love that? And overall better posture and joint health. So here's a little liberosis moment for you. Care less about the bulky fear and care more about your strength and your function. If I'm gonna be real here, these women that look maybe bulky, that's intentional training or drugs. Listen, it's so difficult for women to get to the point of bulkiness where maybe you look a little more manly, which is I think what most women want to avoid. It's so it takes a lot of time, first of all. It takes a lot of precise nutrition and intentional training. You don't want giant biceps. I'm not telling you to go work out your biceps. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying general overall strength training, at least your big compound lifts. Anyway, let's move on. Myth number two to lose weight, you need to eat a lot less. Okay, I understand calories in versus calories out, and this is probably gonna be its own episode, but sometimes undereating can actually backfire. So research shows that chronic calorie restriction can actually lower your metabolism, it can disrupt very important hunger hormones like leptin, and even just a very important hormone for us women, which is estrogen, and it can even impact your menstrual cycle. So the better approach here would be eating an overall balanced diet that includes enough protein, so things like 1.6 to like 2.2 grams per like kilo of body weight is what the literature says, but we don't need to get that specific. Just eat enough protein, try to incorporate protein in as many meals as you can to protect your muscle, balance your carbs and your fats to fuel your workouts and your hormones, and always just be consistent rather than extreme. So my liberosis tip for you here care less about eating less, and just care more about fueling your body properly. And the calorie, like the calorie limit will come if you eat to a point where you feel full, but you're eating whole foods and you see that you're gaining weight, then you know, okay, maybe I'm outside of my calorie zone. I need to cut my calories a little bit, but at least you're fueling your your body with with whole foods, and it's able to function properly. And based on it functioning properly, you can decide if you want to cut calories or not. That's my two cents. Myth number three: more cardio equals more fat loss. Look, cardio is great for your health. Your heart health. I had a whole episode about it. I'm not against cardio in any way. If anything, I think it's maybe one of the most important things you can do, along with strength training. But cardio is great for your heart health and your mood, but fat loss doesn't come just from doing cardio, it comes from the total energy balance and preserving lean muscle. And this goes back to the calorie thing. If you're eating way too much and doing all this cardio, you're not gonna lose weight. Whereas if you don't do any cardio but you're eating in a calorie deficit, you will lose weight. So it's just about the overall energy balance. But we want to approach this in a smart way that's helping to build a strong foundation for our bodies, which is why I included that portion of preserving lean muscle, and that's where you're eating higher protein foods comes in. But a study in obesity reviews from 2012 showed that resistance training is better at maintaining muscle while actually losing fat. So resistance training, especially for new lifters, you you are able to kind of have a body recomposition where you're losing some fat and gaining muscle at the same time. If you are an experienced lifter, it becomes a little bit more difficult. But think about this. If you can do both, and then the cardio, think of it rather than for fat loss, it's for heart health. It's just for you to just live a better, healthier life. It's not for fat loss. The body recop is gonna come from strength training. And again, with my little liberosis tip, care less about endless cardio and care more about your strength and your balance. Myth number four. If you're not sore, you didn't work out hard enough. Uh I know. When you feel sore, you feel like you did something, you feel accomplished, you're like, wow, that was an amazing session. I even fall into this where I'm like, yes, Lita, you're sore. It means you pushed yourself. Some workouts, yeah. You will be sore. Especially if you are a new lifter, if you've been out of the gym for a while, you will be sore. But to be sore every single workout after your body is supposed to be used to it, that's not good. The soreness you feel after new exercise, it's not a marker of an effective workout. Research from the Journal of Strength and Conditioning research shows that strength and muscle gains can happen without soreness. So if soreness is not a good marker, what are some good markers instead? Things like progression. Are you able to do more like reps or increase the weight for a certain exercise? Strength gains. This goes to increasing the amount of weight that you're lifting, improved energy, even just consistency. Like, is your are you building that habit? Is your are your muscles and your nervous system getting used to you going and lifting? These are all better markers than soreness. What is even soreness? Another reminder here, a little liberosis reminder. Care less about soreness and care more about the results that matter. How are you feeling in your body? I know soreness is technically a feeling, but think of it in terms of the strength, what your body can do, the functionality. It's not always about being sore. Okay, and number next, which is I think myth five. You need to work out every single day to see your results. I hate to break it to you, but muscles grow during rest. When you're sleeping, when you're in the gym, you're breaking down your muscle. That's not when it's getting big. It's when you're sleeping and your body's rebuilding itself, or when you're resting and you had enough protein, and you're sitting there and your body's going, Okay, now that we're chilling, I can rebuild myself. It's not the workout itself. Overtraining can reduce your performance, it can increase your fatigue, and it actually risks injury. And research shows that 48 hours of rest between strength sessions for the same muscle group will optimize growth. So this means I can work out legs today and tomorrow I can do upper body. That's okay because it's a different muscle group. But the day after that, I'll be able to do legs again if I want to. You should also listen to your body. If you're not ready, you're still tired, take an extra day. Listen into your body. Being in tune with your body is the best thing that you can do for yourself and for your body. So, general rule of thumb for my little friends here: two to three strike sessions per week. If again we're looking for a more balanced approach, and do some like cardio mobility or active recovery on other days. I also implore you to add cardio. You can listen to my VO2 Max episode where you have to sort of push yourself to actually see cardio gains. When I say light cardio here, that's just something that you're adding for daily movement. We talked in another episode about the importance of just having this mindset shift or this identity where you're living an overall active life. And that means things like walking to the train or taking the stairs instead of the elevator or getting up every few hours to walk around. But when I'm talking about training cardio, that's where you're really going to push yourself to increase your cardio capacity. And you can do both. You can increase your strength training and your cardio capacity. You probably obviously have to prioritize one over the other in terms of time if you had to pick one. But if you're able to, you can do two days a week of strength, two to three days a week of cardio, of like really pushing yourself cardio. And in between all that, you try to stay as active as possible. And I promise you, that's going to be that's gonna set you up really nicely in terms of your overall health and how you feel in your body. So, liberosis tip for this myth here: care less about the grind culture and care more about recovery and smart programming. So, my last tip, myth, or sorry, not tip, we're not giving tips, we're giving little myths that we're debunking. Hello. So, myth number six spot reducing is possible. We all want a big booty and small waist. I know, I know, because I want that. I know you want that, and I know I'm doing abs and crunches every single day thinking my body is going to just reduce fat from my waist and not my bum. Sorry, but crunches won't burn belly fat. Fat loss happens everywhere in your whole body, it's a systematic thing, and it's regulated by hormones and caloric balance. And a 2013 review in the Journal of Sports, Science and Medicine confirmed that localized exercise is not targeting your fat loss in like that one area that you're exercising. A better approach would be resistance training for your whole body, cardio for the whole body, proper nutrition, stress management, quality of sleep. And I'm gonna add on to this list a little mindset shift of you just gotta accept that your body is storing fat where it's gonna store fat. That is genetics, that's just how it is. You can obviously work with your genetics to highlight specific aspects of your body if you want to. Like if you really want a big bum, focus on that, build the muscle in that area. But you have to fuel your body properly in order to do that. You have to do the exercises in order to do that, but you have to understand that if you and me both had this exact same plan, it's gonna look different on the both of us just because of our genetics and the way that our bodies are made. So there has to come a point where you also accept your body for what it is and you love it, and that you respect it, and that you're doing all these things not to look a certain way, but because you deserve it, and because you want to live a long, beautiful, and healthy life. Anyway, that's a probably a topic for another day. So my liberosis tip for this myth here is to care less about obsessing over target areas and to care more about full body health. And honestly, if you see a video or something that's saying lose belly fat, or you see some like ad with a supplement telling you you're gonna burn fat in this one area, just close it. It's just don't don't don't do that to yourself. I'm telling you right now, it's not a thing. They're just trying to sell you something, they're trying to take advantage of your v of your whatever vulnerability, weak area, whatever you want to call it. Just don't listen, okay? So my loves. The takeaway today is liberosis. Letting go of myths, trends, and pressures, and focusing on what actually works. I want you to care about things like strength, smart training, nutrition, recovery, and as always, consistency. Your body's super powerful, and science has your back, so I'm just saying. Anyway, thank you for joining me on Vita with Alita. I hope this helped. And if it did, share this episode with a friend who maybe needs a little liberosis in their life. Remember, care less about the noise and care more about your strength, health, and your freedom. Alright, my loves. See you next week. Take care. Bye bye.