If you google how to lose fat, you can get dozens if not hundreds of conflicting results. Some of them are absolutely true and have the scientific backing to support it. Others, however, are barely based in fact at all, yet are extremely commonplace. You can see them in online discussions, magazine articles, and even touted by online trainers.

Today, we’ll be addressing three of the most prevalent myths surrounding fat loss. In part 2 of this topic, we’ll dive further into why these myths just don’t die, despite the evidence.

Weight Loss Myths That Won’t Die: Part One

The Myths

This list is far from exhaustive. There are simply too many myths to possibly list them all here. However, I’ve selected three that I anecdotally seem to recall seeing the most. Alongside that, I’ll also include variants on the myth that also seem to circulate. Interestingly enough, most of these myths have at least a kernel of truth to them, even if the belief itself is ultimately false. This tends to cause the myth have more credence than it actually deserves, making it all the harder to get rid of.

Starvation Mode

The Myth: Eating too little puts the body into a “starvation mode,” causing it to hold on to bodyfat and make fat loss extremely difficult or impossible.

Variants: Eating below 1200 calories stops fat loss, skipping meals slows metabolism

If there’s any one myth that never seems to go away, it’s this one. It perpetuates the concept of diets being ineffective due to the body adapting to the lack of calories. The fact that many diets fail seemingly validates the idea further.

It is indeed true that the body acclimates to a calorie deficit. It can sense when you’re taking in less energy than you’re expending and will downregulate metabolism accordingly. It’s an innate mechanism designed to help combat starvation and maintain bodyfat levels. In a neutral setting, that’s a good safeguard to have in place. It’s meant to help keep you alive in a starvation setting, and dieting can certainly be seen as controlled starvation, so it checks out.

The problem with this myth is the belief that this mechanism prevents fat loss entirely. This fails a bit of a reality check: If the body could indeed halt fat loss, death by starvation would be virtually impossible. In times of crisis, mistreatment, or imprisonment, there is clear evidence that a lack of food absolutely can and will cause fat loss. The Minnesota starvation experiment was a formal demonstration of this concept at the very least.

While the body does slow metabolic rate, it’s believed that this is a relatively modest effect, about 10% of its total energy requirements. While this is significant, it’s usually not in of itself what stops fat loss. Instead, there are two other confounding factors that are much more likely to demonstrate the phenomenon at hand.

First is the simple fact that estimating calorie intake is extremely difficult. Plainly put, we usually take in way more calories than we think we do. Even when food is tracked and calories/macros are counted, the error rate can still be surprisingly high. This isn’t necessarily an aspect of laziness, either. In some ways, the deck is stacked against us. Given how calorie dense most processed foods are nowadays, visual estimations of portion sizes can be off by hundreds of calories.

The other factor at play is known as Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, or NEAT for short. NEAT consists of the energy burned throughout the day outside of dedicated exercise. This includes things like fidgeting, walking, moving around, and subconscious activity. The reason it’s so important here is that NEAT is extremely variable from person to person, depending on lifestyle, personal habits, etc. Generally, though, as the body enters an energy deficit, NEAT drops due to lethargy and fatigue. This lowers one’s overall maintenance calories, thus making it easier to exceed them when eating. 

In short, the issue usually isn’t just metabolic adaptation. It’s the combination of unintentional higher intake and lowered NEAT that tends to cause fat to drop at lower rates than expected, or not at all.

Carbs Interfere with Fat Loss

The Myth: Carbohydrate intake interferes with fat loss, and the main way to lose fat is by reducing or eliminating carb intake. High carb foods are counterproductive to diet progress.

Variants: Carbs are unhealthy for you, sugar is the devil

First off, I think it’s worth pointing out that carbs weren’t always seen as the enemy. In the period of about the 1970s to 1990s, fat was the vilified macronutrient instead. This stemmed from studies correlating high fat intake with high cholesterol levels. However, despite the perpetuation of low fat diets, obesity rates and heart disease continued to rise. 

Since then, there has been a shift toward viewing carbs as the dietary culprit. Many people found success with low carb approaches to dieting, bringing them into popularity. Even the ketogenic diet, an approach originally designed for epileptic patients, became a mainstream method for losing fat.

Furthermore, researchers such as Gary Taubes and David Ludwig proposed a hypothesis linking obesity with carbohydrate intake. The idea was that since carbohydrates increase insulin levels, they cause disproportionate amounts of fat gain compared to other macros.

Unfortunately, this hypothesis doesn’t quite seem to hold up. The proposed carbohydrate-insulin mechanism has been scrutinized heavily and mostly seen as flawed. This hypothesis also fails the reality check, as most studies find there is little difference in efficacy between lower and higher carb diets. This indicates that overall energy intake is still the determinant of net fat loss, not some specific mechanism tied to carb consumption. 

While there is no denying that low carb diets can be successful, the truth is that they work in spite of the carb decrease, not because of it. There are a few different reasons for this. First, many low carb dieters experience a rapid amount of weight loss very early on in the diet. This drop is due to water and glycogen leaving the body, not a massive drop in bodyfat. 

Additionally, protein tends to be the most satiating macronutrient. Lower carb diets tend to naturally have higher protein content than a traditional diet due to a greater shift in focus to things such as meat. This increased fullness tends to reduce overall food intake, leading to a greater likelihood of a caloric deficit.

Finally, there’s no doubt that many of the easily snackable, calorie rich, and low satiating foods tend to be rich in simple carbohydrate. Even in a controlled diet, these carb sources can make it significantly more difficult to remain within one’s targets. By reducing overall carb intake, this helps somewhat limit these extraneous foods from the diet, making it easier to keep to one’s dietary goals.

X Diet Is the Key to Fat Loss

The Myth: Specific diets hold innate benefits, making them the best for fat loss approaches.

Variants: Virtually any claim about a specific diet being magical/superior to others

There are far too many diets to fully list here. The overall theme is the same, though: Zealots of each dietary method will claim that the diet has some inherent property or mechanism that makes it uniquely advantageous over other approaches. These advantages supposedly make it superior to all other approaches for fat loss, health benefits, etc.

While each diet does indeed differ from one another, they all work via the same underlying mechanism: Each creates a calorie deficit in some way or another. This deficit may be masked by other aspects of the diet and can exist regardless of whether the dieter explicitly tracks their calories or not. The other touted benefits are either highly exaggerated or unverified (Table 1).

Diet	How It’s Supposed to Work	How It Really Works
Ketogenic/Low Carb	Puts the body into ketosis, promoting fat loss	Lower carbs, higher protein = more satiating, less snack heavy carbs = eat less
Intermittent Fasting	Manipulates insulin sensitivity, increasing fat loss	Eating only at certain times of the day = no snacking, larger, more satiating meals = eat less
Paleo	Eating like our ancestors gives us the health benefits of that natural state	Less processed food, increased fiber, produce, lean meats = more satiety = eat less
Carnivore	Focuses on animal products, using ketosis to help with fat loss	Animal products rich in protein = more satiating = eat less
Vegetarian/Vegan	Focuses on plant-based eating, with their health benefits assisting with fat loss	More produce = more fiber, more food volume = more satiating = eat less

Conclusion

Despite these myths being debunked over and over, they still manage to perpetuate and maintain traction through the years. We know they’re false, so why do they continue to persist? What is it about these myths that make them so appealing? And is it even possible to change the public’s perception of them?

Tune in to part 2 as we talk more about why these myths just won’t die.