Losing weight is a big thing for a lot of people, and as with anything that interest a lot of people, weight loss comes with its share of myths, false facts and outright fantasies and falsehoods. Losing weight and getting in shape has as much to do with knowing what to do as know what doesn’t really work. Here are some of the biggest myths in the history of fitness and health…

Expanding Your Ribcage
This is simply not a real thing that you can do. Your bones are going to stay the same shape they’re in right now no matter how many stretches and breathing routines and chest exercises you do. This myth is so popular that it’s even cited in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s book on bodybuilding. There are certain things you can do to strengthen your bones. You can take in more calcium for instance. If you want to strengthen your arm bones, look into karate classes, where you’ll be hitting barely-padded pieces of wood to bust your knuckles up just enough to build them back up stronger. As for making the ribcage bigger though, that’s a myth.

Sweating
People seem to think that sweating is how you burn fat. It’s not. Sweating may show that you’ve been working out, but the act of sweating itself does nothing but cool you off. The way your body gets rid of fat is by turning it into urine and then flushing it out. Sweating only reduces vital water that you absolutely need to replenish at the end of a hard workout. Weight loss camps for adults want you to sweat, but only so you’ll lose that weight.

The “Eat Anything” Diet
There’s no such thing as a miracle diet. There’s no workout you can do to allow you to eat whatever you want. The only way to get to, and maintain, your target weight is with proper diet and exercise. Nobody has the magic bullet to get you around that, yet the belief still persists that you can simply inject your legs with pregnant lady urine or some such and be done with it. Some of the people that sell this stuff on late night TV are actually quite literally convicted felons, so it’s no wonder they don’t mind lying to you.