Why Skipping Meals to Lose Weight Doesn’t Work
Many people skip meals throughout the day, whether it’s because of busy schedules, or in efforts to cut calories and lose weight on any number of diet plans. However, the reality is that skipping meals can not only make it more difficult to lose weight, but it can actually make you gain weight in some situations. Here are 3 reasons why skipping meals is not a good idea when trying to lose weight.
1) Slowed Metabolism
Skipping meals to lose weight is actually a false hope. By going a long time without eating, your body will actually slow its metabolism down. When the body does not get any food or nutrients for a specified amount of time, it begins to go into “starvation” mode and hold onto fat stores in order to counteract the effects of the body not getting enough food over a certain period of time.
Your body requires a certain number of calories in a day to function properly, and it is your metabolism that digests and burns food and calories. When you start to restrict your calories and eat less than your body needs, you will lose weight. Once your body has reached a certain reduced weight, the metabolism will figure out what is happening and will start to function with a lower number of calories. The result of this process is that less weight will be lost until there is actually no more weight being lost.
In essence, a person would have to continually reduce their caloric intake in order to lose weight. However, when skipping meals, the metabolism will inevitably slow down because there are essentially no calories to burn. Once you start increasing the number of calories you consume, you will gain weight because your metabolism has been programmed only to burn a smaller number of calories that the body was getting before. The best way to diet is to eat a lower total number of calories in a day, but spread them out over frequently consumed, smaller meals.
2) Imbalanced Nutrition
Skipping meals to lose weight puts your body at risk of being deficient of certain vitamins and minerals that it requires. One of the most frequently skipped meals of the day is breakfast, which is actually the most important meal of the day. Your body needs the nutrients from breakfast to provide it with the energy it needs to function properly. Denying your body of the nutrients it needs in certain skipped meals can result in reduced energy, as well as other health detriments.
3) Increased Hunger
When you skip meals, you will most likely be starving by the time the next meal is consumed. At that time, you will probably be ravenous, and eat much more than you normally would have if your body had been satisfied from the previously skipped meal. Extreme hunger can cause you to get light-headed, tired, dizzy and irritable, and will cause you to have cravings for foods you probably should be eating. This can result in weight gain.
It is important to make sure you eat frequently throughout the day, and feed your body the nutrients it needs for optimal bodily function.
