3 popular misconceptions

A lot of times, I see people make mistakes in their approach because of poor information and improper mental models. In this post, let's talk about 3 of them.

#1: Intermittent Fasting

It is not a magic solution where you get to eat anything you want within your feeding window. While there are health benefits to it, most people do it for fat loss reasons. It works (for fat loss) primarily because you eat lesser. For example, a popular protocol is fasting for 16 hours and having an 8 hour feeding window. This translates to eating dinner by 9 pm and then the next day, you eat your lunch at 1 pm.

So, 1 pm to 9 pm is your feeding window. As opposed to any time you are awake.

Which translates to you eating lesser.

It is simply about lesser calories consumed and not much else.

If you are doing IF and eating junk and losing weight, well, good for you. But that's in no way healthy.

#2: When you stop strength work, you have to start from scratch

People who've been strength training for a prolonged period of time, say more than a year and then due to whatever reasons fall off the wagon. Of course their strength levels are going to deteriorate. They aren't gonna be able to come back and lift whatever they were lifting, after a long lay-off.

But it is also not going to be a "back to square one" scenario at all. Sure, the first day back is going to be rough. But if we keep our ego in check for the first month or two, then it all comes back.

Strength is a skill. It is a skill that we've worked on. The mind and muscles have built up some form of connect and when that's not been greased in a long time, it is a bit rusty. But once you are back, it comes back MUCH faster than you'd expect.

It is never back to square one.

So, if you are someone who's been taking a long break from strength training and are annoyed with yourself about coming back because it is gonna suck - well, it is gonna suck. But you are gonna be back to your old self in a much shorter time than you think.

#3: Catching up on sleep over the weekend

You sleep only 4-5 hours during the weekdays and then over the weekend, you make up the 10 hour deficit (5 days x 2 hours/day) by sleeping 10 hours in the night and a 2 hour nap.

Well, on average, the numbers add up.

But nope, that's not how the body works.

You cannot make up a sleep deficit and catch up over the weekend this way.

You have to get more days right than wrong.