People have a lot of preconceived notions and perceptions when it comes to fitness with the abundance of misinformation out there. TMM asks India’s leading fitness expert Avinash Mansukhani, Owner, Fight The Sunrise, who specializes in body recomposition and transformation to takeusthrough some of these.
Carbs Call
No carbs are not making you fat! Eating in a caloric surplus is what’s making you pit on fat. Carbs are a whole food group, a whole food source, and nothing good can come from devoiding your body off a whole food source. Carbs are the fastest source of energy for your body and there are many processes that happen in your body where you need fast energy especially if you’re going to be 
exercising. There is also a whole lot of essential nutrients that your body gets via carbs. This is why you see people who go on low-carb diets become really lethargic and develop other problems such as bad breath, mood swings, hormonal imbalances, constipation, etc. Therefore carbs are super important to your diet. If you ask any professional athlete or performer, carbs will make up over 50% of their dietary intake. So why have carbs got its bad name? The only reason this has happened is that carbs are super easy to overeat, which then causes that same caloric surplus to happen. You’ll grab that extra roti, or that extra serving of rice, or have hidden sugars where you don’t know how much is going in, and that’s where the problem arises. Not in carbs themselves but the tendency to overeat carbs more than your body needs. So if you moderate your carb input you can enjoy more than enough of it.
Time Treat
Your body doesn’t understand a time when it comes to digestion. Just like your circulatory system or respiratory system, the digestive system works exactly the same irrespective of what time you eat. Your body is still going to break down what you eat into macro and micronutrients and absorb them through the digestive pathways, irrespective of what the clock says. Some bodybuilders and athletes, for example, get up in the middle of the night, eat and go 
back to sleep. Are they any less fit or healthy? No, they’re the epitome of health and fitness. Stop letting a clock dictate when you eat, listen to your body instead; it’s a way better marker.
Clean & Clear
Eating Healthy is one of the vaguest terms that plague the fitness industry. A lot of people over-consume what they think are healthy foods in unhealthy amounts, causing them to throw their macros out of proportion and over-consuming calories. And thus they don’t see results and get de-motivated. Yes, 5 almonds are good for you, 20 almonds are not.
Weight & Women
Along with getting their nutrition on track, the first piece of advice I give to all women who come to me to start their fitness or transformation journey be it to get healthier or get more aesthetic i.e. losing fat and getting toned is to: lift weights and complement that with cardio/Interval training. The response thathat comes through almost 90% of the time is: ‘but won’t lifting make me look bulky?’ Well No! Testosterone is one of the main driving factors of muscle growth; it increases protein synthesis and increases the neurotransmitters and production of the growth hormone that ensure muscle tissue growth. Women genetically, just don’t have enough testosterone to get that big. Men produce between 8-12 times more testosterone which is why muscle growth is so much more pronounced. The women who you generally see really bulked up are either following a serious training and nutrition program and working really hard to put on that size to serve a particular function in their sport or are on testosterone supplements, again because they are working to get “bulky” for a particular purpose. Most of the women nowadays want the Instagram model look, and if you actually go through the profile of their “idols”, you will find that most of them do lift. And besides the added advantages of faster fat loss, and toned muscles, lifting weights also offers the following health advantages:
- Greater bone density, less vulnerable to osteoporosis
2. Greater strength, athleticism, and flexibility
3. Boosts metabolism and energy
4. Reduces risk of diabetes and heart disease
5. Helps release stress
Detoxification Decoded
While a detox cleanses may help you lose weight because what it does is makes sure your body is not getting enough nutrition through food hence you end up getting into a calorie deficit by only consuming juice throughout the day. Your body then looks to burn fat or muscle to get energy to survive which ends up making you lose weight. So while yes you will lose weight at first, it’s not good weight, secondly, detox cleanses have more disadvantages that come with it:
Number one: It’s not sustainable; how long can you stay on a detox cleanse? Eventually, you will go back to old eating habits and put on that fat.
Number 2: What exactly are you detoxifying with the juices? Your kidneys and liver do this for you, that’s their function and that is what they are meant to do day in and day out. Additionally what toxins exactly are these cleansers helping you get rid of? These cleansers never tell you which toxins it is removing because there is no proof of this.
Number 3: There is a major chance of a person over-hydrating due to consuming too much water throughout the day. This lowers the sodium level in your blood which could lead to overhydration, which is a common side effect of going on these cleanses. This may cause dizziness, cramping, nausea, migraines, and in extreme cases seizures.
And lastly; your body needs its nutrients in their raw form to digest and absorb and process, which juice cleanses look to bypass. Therefore one should be very careful while attempting this I would never recommend it to anyone.
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