Skipping Meals is not the Way to Diet or Lose Weight

September 7, 2008

Now that the holidays are almost over, you want to lose those 5 pounds of fat you think youve gained. First of all, while you may believe the contrary, it isnt that easy to put on 5 pounds of fat over a 2 week period (each pound of fat is worth 3500 calories, in case you were wondering). You would have eat an additional 17500 calories, along with your regular calorie intake, in order to put on five pounds.

However, thats not really what I want to discuss right now. My point is that around the time you are feeling like youve gained a ton of weight, you are also thinking about the new diets, new strategies you want to try in order to lose that weight. And Ill bet you want to lose it in a hurry, right?

Is one of those strategies skipping meals?

Do you think that skipping breakfast will help you lose weight faster than if you ate the meal? Or that skipping lunch and just having breakfast and dinner will help you lose the weight you put on so you can wear the clothes you got for presents? The ones you think dont fit because you were afraid to try them on? So you think that cutting back on calories by cutting out meals will take the weight off quickly, right?

The answer is no, and let me tell you why.

When you eliminate meals, your body doesnt know if you are in California or the Congo, South Boston or Siberia. See, your body doesnt understand that this is a fast of choice, not chance, so it will conserve every single calorie it gets. This is because your body doesn?t know when the next meal is coming, or if it is ever going to get here. The idea is survival, to provide your brain and central nervous system with whatever nutrients it needs in order to keep you alive. For your body to stay alive, then, you metabolism (how fat you burn calories) slows down. As a result of this slowing down, your body will burn calories at a much slower rate, enabling your brain and central nervous system to keep functioning.

But you know, the other problem is that when you skip a meal, you unconsciously set yourself up to overeat later. Lets face it, 6-8 hours is a long time to go without eating (even longer if it?s breakfast you skipped). What happens is that by the time you ?allow? yourself to eat, you subconsciously are thinking, ?I didn?t eat lunch, so I saved all sorts of calories, and I can eat more.Instead of choosing a 4 ounce chicken breast with a small fries and green salad, you pick the fried chicken, large fries and milkshake. Why not? You havent eaten all day, right?

Wrong.

Please dont cause your metabolism to get all out of whack. I realize this is hard to hear..but do what your mom always told you: eat your meals. And, make your friends happy by chewing with your mouth shut.

netinfoseek.com | edit