Diet Tips: Don’t Skip Meals or Starve Yourself to Lose Weight

While it’s a big win to stop snacking, don’t get carried away and try skipping meals to lose weight. It will not work. Chances are you’ll find yourself hungry and then go back to snacking, usually not something nutritious.

However, you may lose some weight, but this is not a healthy way to do it. Because the weight can come back on when your body goes into “starvation” mode.

Some people aren’t that hungry in the morning, so they skip breakfast, thinking it might be a convenient way to lose weight. But it’s not that useful. According to a 2005 study, which was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, skipping breakfast can lead to weight gain. In the study, those who skipped breakfast ate more throughout the day than those who didn’t.

A study of children from northern Italy in the same year showed higher rates of obesity in those who skipped breakfast. Apparently, eating something in the morning is better than nothing.

Don’t skip lunch either, otherwise you could succumb to afternoon snacks that will ruin your appetite for a healthy and satisfying dinner. And if you don’t eat dinner, you may find yourself raiding the freezer later for not one, but two bowls of delicious but nutritious ice cream.

Plus, you’re also messing up your food control or contributing to what I sometimes call a “bad picker.” When you suffer from a bad picker, it means that you don’t know how to pick your food. Instead of choosing the right things to eat, you immerse yourself in easy virtue foods.

No, a banana split is not the same as a meal, even if the calories are close together. The nutrition is not there. And because of its high sugar content, ice cream can make you feel even hungrier later, leading you to make more bad food choices. You get caught in a vicious circle.

Just commit to eating well at meals. Have a healthy mix of protein, fat and carbohydrates.

Over time, eating well and eating slowly will control your hunger, unless there is an underlying emotional, environmental, or physical problem that is not being addressed. For example, if you’re eating because of stress or anxiety, if the ingredients in processed foods are making you sick, or if you’re suffering from some undetected problem, such as a candida overgrowth.

But that is another story that I will deal with in another article. For now, let’s just commit to eating nutritious foods at regular meal times.