What happens if you skip a meal?

One of the first reflexes of a person who wants to lose weight is to believe that skipping a meal will help them lose weight. However, if the body does not receive food, the opposite effect will occur, against all odds.

Health impacts if you skip a meal

Eating behavior influences the body’s metabolism. When a person breaks the usual cycle by skipping a meal, their metabolism deteriorates. The first consequence will be unusual fatigue, making reflexes and the mind slower. Energy is so depleted that the person may be handicapped in his daily life.

Skipping a meal also causes the body to become disordered. The body used to receive food will not adapt to this sudden interruption. It will even cause feelings of hunger out of control in return. It then becomes much more difficult to avoid overeating when the feeling of hunger comes and goes unusually. It is also possible that the opposite case may occur, i.e. that the feeling of hunger is absent when it is time to eat. When the body is deregulated in this way, the proper functioning of the metabolism is impaired. This can lead to after-effects such as increased diabetes.

Physical consequences of skipping a meal

The other consequence is a physical one since a skipped meal makes you gain weight. Indeed, when a person does not eat, his body stores fat that accumulates on top of the fat already present, so that a rapid increase in weight and mass is caused. Moreover, skipping a meal leads at times to unbearable feelings of starvation that will incite most people to snack during the day or eat too much to compensate. These reactions will further increase in weight gain.

That’s not all since abstaining from food will reduce the dynamism of the metabolism as we have said. However, it is important to know that metabolism serves to burn fat ingested during the day. So slowing it down will necessarily reduce the amount of fat it can burn. After skipping a meal, the food you eat afterward will form more fat than if you hadn’t skipped a meal.

Thus, the ideal way to lose weight is not to give in to the ease of not eating anymore, but rather to eat better. Dietary rebalancing or low-calorie diets seem to take longer but are above all more effective and safe.

If you want to lose weight, check out our articles on What to eat for breakfast to lose weight.