I received an email from a guy who had been getting most of his fitness advice on a popular bodybuilding site. While there are some bodybuilders that give good advice, most of them rehash a lot of garbage fitness myths that can get you in trouble.

This particular bodybuilder recommended that you take mega doses of fish oil to start your day and he was actually saying that fish oil was a weight loss aid, which it isn’t.

Fish oil does not burn fat. It improves your metabolism, so that if you do the right things, such as eating right and exercising on a regular basis, you will have a better chance of losing weight than the average Joe, because your system is functioning better than his, or hers.

Mega dosing on fish oil is not a good idea either. If you haven’t taken fish oil before and you introduce it into your system at a high level, you are going to have to stock up on reading material, because you’re going to be sitting on the porcelain for long stretches. You had better lay in some extra Charmin, too.

Too much of anything is not a good idea, especially in the beginning. You would think that most folks would use a little common sense, but where fitness is concerned, most people go overboard and especially if they heard it from somebody they think looks good.

The guy that wrote me was suffering from more than every which way but loose. He had acid reflux and his breath had soured worse than milk on a 100 degree day in a car trunk. His guru had recommended taking 6 to 12 fish oil capsules at a time. He’s lucky his intestines are still in his body.

Not only that, but when you combine a second rate fish oil with big doses, you are really asking to be punished. My advice to him was to stop taking the cheap stuff, immediately and wait two weeks, before starting again, with a high quality fish oil at half a regular dose, and work his way up to a regular dose, over two weeks.

If he’s concerned with burning fat and not his sphincter, he should eat fat burning foods, such as apples, broccoli, cabbage, figs, garlic, grapefruit, kiwi and spinach. There are many more, but that’s a good start.

The average apple is filling and has 81 calories. A cup of broccoli has 44 calories. These are things you can eat a bunch of. But don’t go hog wild…introduce this stuff into your diet slowly, too. Introducing 6 cups of spinach into your system…if you’ve never eaten it before, can also have you running to the porcelain.

Be sure you are moderate with the exercise too, especially if you’re over 40. Don’t go out there trying to win a race, before you have a few muscles in working order. There’s a reason that Marines are young.