The world of health and fitness is fraught with myths and misconceptions. With commercials and stories on new foods, fitness schedules, and contradictory reports about what we can and should not do, we are continually bombarded.

Here are a few tips I've found that can clear up some of the uncertainty and help you be a happier, fitter person, to help answer some of the questions once and for all.

1. There are no quick fixes, tricks or miracle pills when it comes to weight loss, health or fitness.

I'm sorry to see your bubble broken right from the bat, but it's real. With tried-and-tested approaches, you will definitely speed up the operation, prevent errors and optimize your efforts, but the key words here are your efforts. A prerequisite is working hard and being disciplined. The key is to understand and bring into practice suggestions and strategies that are more successful than others, so that you can optimize your time.

2. The scales are not a perfect way to track weight loss.

The scales would not give you a great deal of helpful input until you have over 10-15kg to lose. The problem with scale weight is that muscle and fat are not separated, and most individuals now realize that increasing muscle can help you lose body fat and make you look healthier. Losing muscle is poor, increasing muscle is healthy, but that's not what the scales can tell you!

3. Soreness is OK, but it's not a good fitness marker.

Only because the next day you're not tired, don't say you haven't exercised successfully. Some individuals appear to get very sore and some don't, depending on the inflammatory reaction of the body to exercise, it's quite an individual thing.

4. Stacking exercise can only lead to illness or plateau on top of instability.

In much of the exercise industry, this fact is greatly underestimated. Although the consistency of movement and exercise methodology isn't 'the sexy things' that can inspire you and make you an exciting marketing campaign, it's always the difference between success and outcomes, or spinning the wheels and going nowhere. Perhaps worse, bad technique preparation will lead to acute or chronic damage in the long run.

5. Attitude, when it comes to the performances, is the number one thing.

You can get success if you have an optimistic, can-do mindset and a sincere willingness to change and develop. A poor attitude will drastically hold you down. There is a strong link, independent of biology and natural ability, between attitude and performance.
6. Do not buy into the notion that becoming older would lead to a drop in your physical efficiency.

None of us will live forever, but the more you spend cultivating bad habits, the worse you get over time. Your age is not the reason, but the amount of time spent maintaining a lifestyle that's damaging to your health. 

Is 10 years of smoking worse than five years of smoking? Was 10 minutes of slamming your head against a brick wall harder for you than five minutes of doing it? Of course, the conclusion is yes, and getting older has nothing to do with it.

7. Exercise is just like brushing your teeth.

Nobody gets nervous about their teeth being cleaned, however you know it has to be done, and you just do it. And you're not going to brush your teeth five days a week, and just once a week, rather daily. On the same way, in only eight-week or 12-week blocks, workout does not happen, it should be a natural part of your schedule. 

8. There are several aspects that have contributed to the present level of fitness and wellbeing.

Many individuals are naturally predisposed to be leaner, heavier and fitter. Some individuals started to exercise later in life, so they have less experience in training and are playing 'catch up'. Many persons have grown up eating badly and are now seeking to alter socially rooted habits to reverse the results. To get the results they want, some people just need to practice harder than others. We're all different. Knowing where you are along the continuum and where you want to be is crucial, and balancing your dietary efforts and exercise performance accordingly.

9. Recovery from exercise is as crucial as the workout itself.

For a balanced program and optimal outcomes, a healthy post workout meal, seven to nine hours of sleep, stress reduction and some downtime are crucial. You don't get results from the workout; by recovering from the workout, you get outcomes.

10. You are what you eat. 

What you eat (or don't eat) could have the single greatest effect on your health and set the framework for your potential for physical fitness and body composition.
But think about the quality of the food you consume, too. If it's a vegetable or a fruit, how is it grown? If it's an animal, how have they been raised? Did it live or roam free in a cage? Was it provided with a natural diet fed with grass or an unnatural diet fed with grain? Was it full of hormones and antibiotics pumped in? Your food is only as good as the health of the plant or animal from which it originates. You are what you're eating.

11. If you go in search of an excuse, one will always be found.

But just remember that there's someone else in the world somewhere, in worse circumstances than you, still achieving their goals.

12. In a linear fashion, results do not happen.

Your body doesn't function that way. You just have to embrace the grind sometimes and deal with the monotony of eating well and training and having confidence in the process. Each week, don't expect consistent progress. Sometimes things just need to come together to hit a critical mass or a tipping point, and you'll suddenly notice a big rise in fat loss, or a breakthrough in strength. The grind, embrace it.

13. There are many ways to enhance your diet, not a one-size-fits-all strategy.

Eat all natural foods, remove processed foods, provide your body with sufficient nutrients to maintain health, fitness, muscle and strength, and create an energy or calorie deficit to lose unwanted body fat. Not everyone has to follow the same eating plan as long as the fundamental principles remain the same.

14. What you look like now is largely the result of how you eat and move every day, and how fit and capable you are.

This is also going to be the case within one, five, or 10 years. How can you eat and move every day at the moment? And what modifications can you make to help you achieve health and fitness goals?

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