You hear these “facts” all your life and you… believe them. Eat breakfast to jump start your metabolism. This should lead to weight loss. Not necessarily. If your body is USED to not having breakfast then there is no direct impact. Have great sex because you can burn loads of calories. Turns out sex burns as much calories as a quick walk — 21 to be exact.
Depressing.
Quite the eye opener. ABC News wrote up an article about obesity myths this week and here are the key highlights:
LOSING WEIGHT MYTHS
- Sex burns between 100-300 calories. Fact: The only study that scientifically measured the energy output found that sex lasted six minutes on average and burned a mere 21 calories, about as much as walking. That’s for a man. The study was done in 1984 and didn’t measure the women’s experience.
- Small changes in diet or exercise lead to large, long-term weight changes. Fact: The body adapts to changes, so small steps to cut calories don’t have the same effect over time, studies suggest. At least one outside expert agrees with the authors that the “small changes” concept is based on an “oversimplified” 3,500-calorie rule, that adding or cutting that many calories alters weight by one pound.
- School gym classes have a big impact on kids’ weight. Fact: Classes typically are not long, often or intense enough to make much difference.
- Losing a lot of weight quickly is worse than losing a little slowly over the long term. Fact: Although many dieters regain weight, those who lose a lot to start with often end up at a lower weight than people who drop more modest amounts.
- Snacking leads to weight gain. Fact: No high quality studies support that, the authors say.
- Regularly eating breakfast helps prevent obesity. Fact: Two studies found no effect on weight and one suggested that the effect depended on whether people were used to skipping breakfast or not.
- Setting overly ambitious goals leads to frustration and less weight loss. Fact: Some studies suggest people do better with high goals.
What do you think about the findings? I’m particularly shocked about the fact that “setting ambitious goals” and “losing weight quickly” are no longer bad ideas. I always thought the more obtainable the goal the better. Apparently, I need to step it up!
Vera Sweeney is a mom of two beautiful children and the founder of 
at 12:32 pm
Very, very interesting. I only have one comment. I thought that you didn’t look for giant losses in weight loss because it encourages yo-yo dieting which over time wrecks your metabolism.
at 12:38 am
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