Women’s magazines, our favourite influencers, our best friend, the neighbour… Everyone has the “best advice” on how to lose weight fast and get rid of cellulite and get a model body in just one week. But, at the risk of disappointing you, many of the tips you hear here and there are really not worth following… Useless, ineffective or even harmful to our health — here are 8 widespread myths to forget immediately.
Going for 0% fat products
An entire supermarket aisle packed with products that all look delicious and won’t make you gain a single gram… Sounds dreamy, right? Yet, despite the advice you may have heard, if you want to slim down, reduce cellulite or simply stay healthy, low-fat products should be crossed off your shopping list. Whether it’s ready meals, yoghurts, dessert creams or butter, so-called “light” products contain substances that are harmful to your body. For example, 0% fruit yoghurts may indeed contain no fat, but that fat is replaced by white sugar — the number one enemy when it comes to saying goodbye to dimples! If you’re not convinced, take a look at the ingredient list on your low-fat products… You’ll quickly realise they have no place in your diet!
Skipping dinner
Among the worst myths, you often hear that dinner can be skipped, since we don’t burn energy during the night. Yet every meal of the day matters, and dinner is no exception! Breakfast is essential — it gives our body the energy it needs after a night without food. Lunch is a must — it’s the meal that fuels our system through to the evening. As for dinner, it allows your body to function properly throughout the night. Contrary to popular belief, we do burn energy even at rest. By skipping dinner, you put your body under stress and it will rush to store everything at the next meal. And where there’s storing, there’s cellulite and extra pounds! The best way to slim down and properly reduce dimples is therefore to eat 3 to 4 times a day, keeping your meals balanced, without deprivation or excess.
Cutting out starchy foods
Starchy foods are frequently banned by anyone trying to slim down and get rid of orange-peel skin. Yet they have a perfectly legitimate place in a healthy, balanced diet! Starchy foods are made up of slow-release carbohydrates, which provide our body with energy for several hours. In practice, eating starchy foods at every meal helps avoid energy slumps and sudden cravings. And if you’re not snacking between meals, you’re less likely to store fat and see dimples appear. For best results, always opt for wholegrain versions, such as brown rice, wholegrain pasta or wholegrain bread. These wholegrains contain little to no sugar, unlike their “white” counterparts. And as we all know, sugar is bad news — both for your figure and your health! Also think about lentils, oats, quinoa or chickpeas. In short, vary your starchy foods but whatever you do, don’t cut them out of your diet.
Counting calories — one of the myths you absolutely must let go of
We can’t talk about the worst myths without mentioning this one: the frantic, automatic counting of every single calorie consumed. Contrary to what you might think, calories are not our enemies. They are what allow our body to function properly — and therefore to live in good health, no less. While it can be useful, when rebalancing your diet, to have a rough idea of how many calories you should be consuming each day, it should never become an obsession! What matters when it comes to slimming down and reducing cellulite is not the calorie count of a food, but its nutritional composition. Take an apple and a handful of sweets, for example. Both contain around 100 calories. Yet while the apple provides fibre and antioxidants, the sweets deliver sugar and chemical additives. So it’s pretty clear that, to say bye-bye to dimples, the apple is the better choice — even if both show the same calorie count…
Drinking diet sodas
We’ve already seen that consuming low-fat products is one of the myths to forget. The same goes for drinks! Despite their appealing promises, diet sodas should be permanently removed from your fridge. In these drinks, sugar is replaced by sweeteners and additives that may be harmful to our health. What’s more, this fake sugar tricks our brain and triggers irresistible snacking urges… which lead to weight gain and make cellulite worse. To break this vicious cycle, we strongly recommend ditching sodas in favour of homemade fruit juices or fresh, delicious infused waters!
Not drinking too much to avoid water retention
While this advice might seem logical at first glance, it absolutely belongs on this list of worst myths! One of the causes of water retention — and therefore the appearance of uncomfortable, sometimes painful swelling in the legs, tingling sensations and water-based cellulite — is actually a lack of water. Simply put, if your body doesn’t receive enough water, it stores as much as possible to avoid running short. The solution is to show it that no, you’re not depriving it of water, and that it doesn’t need to stock up. To do that, you need to drink enough every day! The recommended minimum is 1 litre of water per day, but you can drink more if you feel the need. Don’t hesitate to eat foods with a high water content too, such as cucumber, melon or watermelon. Staying well hydrated will help you flush out toxins, improve digestion, break down fat stores and smooth out cellulite.
One of the worst myths… dieting is effective against cellulite!
To wrap up this list of the worst myths — the ones to forget immediately — let’s talk about diets. There are countless diets out there, but they all have one thing in common: they are generally based on deprivation. The concept behind a diet is to reduce the calories you give your body, so it draws directly on fat reserves and you lose weight.
While this often works reasonably well at first, your body will quickly adapt to the deprivation and learn to function on less energy. Not only will you stop losing weight, but you may also start feeling weak and tired on a daily basis.
The second problem with diets is that they’re not sustainable long-term. And as soon as you return to normal eating, you risk seeing all the lost weight come back. On top of that, the fat lost during a diet is superficial fat. The fatty deposits responsible for cellulite cannot be broken down this way.
In practice, you may be slimmer, but the orange-peel skin will still be there! Finally, dieting creates a great deal of frustration — you lose the pleasure of eating and every “slip” feels like a disaster. To avoid all of this, nothing beats a healthy, balanced diet that will help you slim down sustainably and effectively while reducing dimples.
Now you know which myths to leave behind if you want to slim down and lose cellulite!
