Muscle Myths: 50 Health & Fitness Mistakes You Don't Know You're Making (The Build Healthy Muscle Series)
Muscle Myths: 50 Health & Fitness Mistakes You Don't Know You're Making (The Build Healthy Muscle Series) book cover

Muscle Myths: 50 Health & Fitness Mistakes You Don't Know You're Making (The Build Healthy Muscle Series)

Paperback – March 1, 2012

by
Price
$103.61
Format
Paperback
Pages
202
Publisher
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1475143775
Dimensions
6 x 0.5 x 9 inches

Description

"I lost 18 lbs and gained 30 lbs on my chest press and 20 lbs on my curls. I look better than I did when I ran 5 miles a day in cross country in high school." -Michael Berger (Amazon Verified Purchase) "I read these books and followed them and my lifts all went up at least 20lbs in 3 weeks." -Aaron (Amazon Verified Purchase) "Great book! Debunks so much of the rubbish out there about fitness. Easy to read, entertaining and informative. Mike really knows his stuff!" -Mark Robinson (Amazon Verified Purchase) "A great book with a ton of information all backed by scientific studies. If you think you know all you need to know about lifting, get this book, it will surprise you what he proves and disproves!" -"skitsy" (Amazon Reviewer) "Easy to follow and made sense. Breaks down all the crap we hear on a daily basis. Getting fit can seem so frustrating and difficult and he does a great job of breaking it down and making it so easy." -prstapleton (Amazon Verified Purchase) "It's always great to have so many concerns and claims laid to rest and it's really quite liberating to find a resource that actually backs up the text with credible research rather than just echoing what a distant blogger also said." -Gabe (Amazon Verified Purchase) "Everyone should read this book before they embark on their fitness/weight loss campaign, because chances are that half of what you are doing is a waste of your time, and some of what you are doing is even counter-productive." -Paul (Amazon Verified Purchase) "This book takes everything you need to know about getting into the best shape of your life, and simplifies it for anyone." -Tito (Amazon Verified Purchase) Hi,I'm Mike and I believe that every person can achieve the body of his or her dreams, and I work hard to give everyone that chance by providing workable, proven advice grounded in science, not a desire to sell phony magazines, workout products, or supplements.Through my work, I've helped thousands of people achieve their health and fitness goals, and I share everything I know in my books.So if you're looking to get in shape and look great, then I think I can help you. I hope you enjoy my books and I'd love to hear from you at my site, muscleforlife.com.Sincerely,Mike From the Inside Flap BOOKS BY MICHAEL MATTHEWS Bigger Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Male Body Thinner Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Female Body Muscle Myths: 50 Health & Fitness Mistakes You Don't Know You're Making The Shredded Chef: 120 Recipes for Building Muscle, Getting Lean, and Staying Healthy Eat Green Get Lean:xa0100 Vegetarian and Vegan Recipes for Building Muscle, Getting Lean and Staying Healthy CARDIO SUCKS! The Simple Science of Burning Fat Fast and Getting in Shape BOOKS BY MICHAEL MATTHEWS Bigger Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Male Body Thinner Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Female Body Muscle Myths: 50 Health & Fitness Mistakes You Don't Know You're Making The Shredded Chef: 120 Recipes for Building Muscle, Getting Lean, and Staying Healthy Eat Green Get Lean:xa0100 Vegetarian and Vegan Recipes for Building Muscle, Getting Lean and Staying Healthy CARDIO SUCKS! The Simple Science of Burning Fat Fast and Getting in Shape MIKE MATTHEWS is an author and fitness enthusiast that has helped thousands of people build lean, strong, and healthy bodies. Read more

Features & Highlights

  • If you’ve ever felt lost in the sea of contradictory training and diet advice out there and you just want to know once and for all what works and what doesn’t—what’s scientifically true and what’s false—when it comes to building muscle and getting ripped, then you need to read this book. Let me ask you a question. Do any of the following claims sound familiar? • “I have bad genetics—I’m a ‘hardgainer.’” • “You have to work your abs more to get a six-pack.” • “When doing cardio, you want your heart rate in the ‘fat burning zone.’” • “You have to do cardio for 20 minutes before your body starts burning fat.” • “Don’t eat at night if you want to lose weight.” • “Steroids make you look great.” • “I’m overweight because I have a slow metabolism.” You’ve probably heard one or more of these statements before, and the sad truth is lies like these have ruined many people’s fitness ambitions. There are many, many more. Thanks to the overwhelming amount of fitness pseudo-science and lies being pushed on us every day by bogus magazines and self-styled “gurus,” it’s becoming harder and harder to get in shape. Muscle Myths was written to debunk the most commonplace and harmful gimmicks, fads, myths, and misinformation in the health and fitness industry. Here are just some of the things you’ll learn in this book: • Why you don’t have to cut carbohydrates (carbs), or fat, or eat weird combinations of food to lose weight. • The truth about supplements and why 99% of them are a complete waste of money (and the few that are actually scientifically proven to work). • What it actually takes to “tone up”—and it’s not doing “shaping exercises” (these don’t exist) or doing a million reps every workout. • Why women shouldn’t be training differently than men if they want the lean, toned, and sexy type of body that they see in magazines, TV shows, and movies. • The scientific secrets of getting a six-pack. Forget 6-minute gimmicks, doing endless crunches, and hours of grueling cardio—it’s actually pretty easy when you know what you’re doing. • Training and diet methods that will completely shatter any perceived “genetic barriers” that you think are holding you back from building a muscular, lean physique that you love. • The proper way to stretch so you don’t sap your strength and risk injury. (Most people do this wrong and suffer the consequences without even realizing it.) • And much more. With the information in this book, you can save the money, time, and frustration of buying into misleading diet plans and products that promise unattainable results. You can become your own personal trainer and start getting real results with your diet and exercise.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(316)
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25%
(263)
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15%
(158)
★★
7%
(74)
★
23%
(242)

Most Helpful Reviews

✓ Verified Purchase

Good, but not Bulletproof

I picked this up in audiobook form shortly after listening to Dave Asprey's "Bulletproof Diet". It is a good book and I don't regret getting it at all. However, I think there is more information now than what was available when this book was written.

The author, Michael Matthews, is certainly a "calorie is a calorie" guy. And I will admit on some level that he may be right. There is new research now that certain foods heavily influence your gut bacteria, and that the type of gut bacteria you have has a lot to do with your weight.

Actual scientific studies, published in Nature, show that the obese patients in the study (about 80% of the group studied) had lower counts of gut microbiota. These people were more obese than those with higher counts of gut bacteria. They also tended to put on weight faster.

If a calorie is just a calorie, then nobody in the groups should have put on weight unless they were eating more calories than they were burning. So it seems that there is more to it than just calories in vs. energy expended. Hmmm.

I highly recommend getting a copy of Dave Asprey's "Bulletproof Diet" and "Go Wild: Free Your Body and Mind from the Afflictions of Civilization," by John J. Ratey and Richard Manning. Both books go beyond the calorie. The types of food you eat do influence gut bacteria, and these books explain that very well.

I do like that Matthews isn't afraid to count calories. I guess I understand, but I don't know why everyone is so against counting calories. Even if there is more to it than calories, in 2014 I dropped 65 pounds, and I did so after joining MyFitnessPal and by eating a lot better. It is very possible to eat healthy, but still overeat. It was only by logging for a while on MFP that I was able to see exactly what was sabotaging me.

Also, I take issues with a few of his busted myths. For example: Myth #41: Eating a lot of protein is bad for your kidneys.

The one study he produced was hardly the be all and end all of the matter. High protein diets increase the amount of acid in your body. See the study, "Excess Dietary Protein Can Adversely Affect Bone1,2" by Uriel S. Barzel and Linda K. Massey. In it they note that the effects of dietary protein may be greater as we age: aging kidneys cannot generate ammonium ions and excrete hydrogen ions as well as young kidneys do. It also points out that when the body is challenged with a dietary acid load, "the kidneys excrete more acidic urine, and the organism also turns to the skeleton for additional buffer. " In other words, a high protein diet can leach calcium from the bones.

So he may technically be right that the study he produced didn't show any kidney damage from a high protein diet, there is plenty of evidence that a high protein diet may have negative effects over time.

The "Bulletproof Diet" is one of the few books I have read where the author actually understands the dangers of too much or too little protein. Yes, like Goldilocks, Asprey gets it just right, and gets my vote for a book that should be read along with Muscle Myths.
17 people found this helpful
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Where was Michael Matthews ten years ago!

I grew up reading Joe Weider's Muscle and Fitness as well as the magazines from Bill Phillips and EAS and I remember thinking when I was eighteen how freaking hard and complicated it seemed to build muscle. I came very close to giving up my dream of having a musclar, lean, and strong body. A couple years went by. I experimented with HIT, HVT, and eventually came upon the books by Nate Green and Lou Schuler and finally started to make some signicant gains in strength and size. Unfortunately though it came with a price. Their so called "functional exercises" messed up my joints from the high impact forces and while I was bigger I didn't feel like I was defined enough and still thought a lot of body parts were lacking from no direct exercise whatsoever.

I discovered Michael Matthews' Bigger, Leaner, Stronger in December of 2012 and have been following his routines and advice for over a year now and have seen a signifcant improvement in my physique (especially my chest and shoulders) and have gained strength relatively easily compared to other routines I had done in the past. After a year though I still had some questions about training, nutrition, and lifestyle that were only just touched upon in BLS. Thankfully this book filled in those gaps and has greatly expanded my knowledge of exercise and has shown me that losing fat, building muscle, and getting healthy is no where near as complicated as the Joe Weider's and Bill Phillips' would have you believe.

One thing that I truly appreciated in this book is that Michael truly does seem unbiased. There are a lot of myths in the book that he discredits even though he uses a different method (an example is intermittent fasting). That goes very far with me. Thanks Mike for putting out practical and true information for us to benefit from.
6 people found this helpful
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myths

very true, it's helpful to know that everything here in the mainstream media is not true! However, some of these myths are repeated in the other books
2 people found this helpful
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Awesome read!

Michael Matthews is very knowledgeable in fitness. I learned a lot with this book. Gives it straight forward with no BS. Good job Mike!
2 people found this helpful
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Stuff everyone should know, but few do.

I have spent the last few months learning about weight training, and while I cannot say that this book debunked any myths that I had as of now - it covered pretty much all of the things I wondered about when I started.

It was reassuring to see that my dozens of hours of research came to the same conclusions.

Just one example - people think that you can remove fat from one area of your body by working that area. This was something that a few months ago, I did not know the answer to and spent a lot of time to determine that it was not possible - and yet even today a fitness article advises people to do ab exercises to reduce belly fat. That does not work!!! To reduce belly fat, you need to eat fewer calories and burn more calories - and it will come off everywhere. No spot removal is possible.

[...]

So buy this book, read it, then give it to a friend - and debunk dozens of myths. And save yourself from ab work that will do almost nothing compared to running and eating less.
2 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Informative

Informative
1 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

This one hits all the angles and is no BS!

Why do I love this book? I am what is considered in medical terms as in the "non morbid obese" category. I am 67 years old, 5'9' and weighed 195 pounds. I have always done light morning workouts of 4 sets of 30 push ups and three sets of 75 crunches on at least 4 days per week. I was on absolutely no medication until recently when due to Dr. advice I was put on 20 mg of a lipitor generic per day due to high triglycerides and cholesterol. Since my weight had been 'creeping up" I was determined to change the way I eat,and not only do that but unlike a typical "fad' diet I set out to have a greater understanding of how foods affect our body. After all, in my way of thinking, a person can sacrifice for a few weeks on a "diet" but if they don't make that diet something that is sustainable to them then they will go back to old patterns.

So I have read numerous articles, books, and watched several "presentations" about weight loss trying to glean commonalities and what is really the truth. Most books, articles and especially those click bait type computer presentations are trying to sell you "their" product and it may be a relatively inexpensive book but they predominately then come on for you to take supplements (only their labs make the efficient ones that are "very expensive to make") at costs that are well over $1 a pill which are to be taken at least once a day. Here's the problem with that in my opinion. To be truly life changing you need to incorporate what you will consume on a daily basis into your life style in a way that you will be easily able to sustain (keep it up with little or no thought and effort as well as actually enjoy it) and as because i am on a fixed budget I definitely cannot sustain taking expensive supplements all my life!

With that background and the amount of independent research I have done I was compelled to write this review of Mike Matthews "Muscle Myths" because I believe he hits the nail,on the head on every single issue. In my opinion (compared to the rest of the info out there) Mike is actually trying to do the reader a service and not just trying to sell you his version of a non sustainable supplement. He's a no BS guy and gives you all the angles and nuances of weight loss, gain, muscle loss or gain and fat loss, gain so no matter if you want to be ripped with lots of muscle mass or just lean and full of energy, Mike hits it all! I an definitely a fan and (compared to what I've seen so far) I would give his book a 10 star rating if it went that high. Thank you Mike Matthews. BTW, after two weeks a currently weigh 182 pounds, I am not hungry all the time, my energy is great and I'm confident that i will soon reach my goal of 175 lbs.
1 people found this helpful
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Clears doubts in ambiguous areas of fitness.

It is a book full of good, science-based advice, often touching on little known topics that help clear doubts about what to do when dealing with exercise as well as nutrition that support muscle growth. I liked it so much, I gave a hard copy as as a present to a friend of mine who also works out regularly.
1 people found this helpful
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I really enjoyed the two books I read "Muscle Myths" and "" ...

I really enjoyed the two books I read "Muscle Myths" and "" Cardio Sucks." I also listened to your "Leaner, Stronger" audible book. I'm 55 years old, weigh 138 and I'm just under 10% body fat. I use the total gym and dumbbells. I have followed a routine by a trainer from Total Gym and I have also used the "ME" workout. I've been a runner since the age of 12. I have cut back on my cardio. After using the total gym for a year I was able to trim my stomach for the first time in my life. I was curious to hear what you thought of the total gym and ME workouts.

Thanks,

Ken Harris
1 people found this helpful
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This is a must read for anyone who is serious about body transformation

I highly recommend this book. I know a lot about fitness and found only one mistake in the entire text (which is that testosterone is a viable option for guys over 40). This book is full of very practical advice and explodes the key broscience out there and backs it up with references.
1 people found this helpful

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