Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Why Skipping Meals Can Make You Gain Weight

You read the title right, hungry one. It is indeed a fact that skipping meals regularly in a bid to starve all the excess fat out of you is invalid and a bad idea too. This is actually good news, you don't need to stop eating to get thinner.

Before I explain the true dangers of irregular eating patterns, I will once again urge you to NOT skip meals... If you really want to lose the excess fat the right way, you need to eat right and exercise, which means you need to eat three times a day - all your breakfast, lunch and dinner too. In fact, it shouldn't be done by anybody. A balanced and regular diet is the only real way to get healthier.

Why Should You Not Skip Meals?

It's simple math- if you want to lose a pound a week, you need to lose over 3500 calories, which is 500 calories a day, excluding all your regular daily activities. So sometimes we comes up the (false) logic that if we skip a meal, we won't gain as many calories and therefore, will tend to lose more calories. Now that I have told you skipping meals is bad, you need to know why it's so. I think you'll agree to most of the points mentioned below.

Low Blood Sugar
One of the two serious reasons for you to not skip a meal, or even eat too little at a time is hypoglycemia. It means your body has a low blood sugar level. Symptoms include headaches and weakness, along with a horde of other problems. Every time you skip a meal, you give your body less sugar, thereby starving your body of energy.

Cause of Diabetes
This is the other most important reason to stop skipping meals. People who regularly skip meals have been proven to risk inviting a roller coaster metabolic pattern. This will eventually lead to spikes in your glucose levels coupled with a slow or delayed insulin release. This results in diabetes.

Unbalanced Calorie Intake
Your daily calorie intake is not what it should be. If you've been skipping a meal in the day, you're giving your body the wrong kind of signals. Eating food is one of the three things important to survive, and giving that up 'once in a while' makes your body think there's not enough food to go. Which means your body will store more than the normal amount of fat every time you do eat. Instead, give your body a regular calorie intake. This keeps your total metabolism in optimum conditions, you don't feel sick all the time because you didn't eat and you still stay on the road to health. You can instead, switch to low calorie meals. This will help you to not go hungry and still lower your calorie intake.

Hunger Attacks
I don't even need to explain this one. You don't eat now, chances are, the next meal you eat, is super-sized. If you skip meals, you probably feel hungry every time you even look at food. That, makes you all the more hungry the next time you sit on the dinner table. Another belief some people possess is that if they didn't eat before, they can eat a little extra now, as a little reward. Read the sentence again and tell me if it's logical. The worst part is, this eventually develops to be quite a nasty habit. Your body then gets used to the irregularities in the diet, but, not in the right way. You learn to ignore the hunger pangs when you skip a meal, only to gorge mindlessly the next time.

Irregular Cravings
You'll wake up late in the night, wanting a snack to eat or some milk to drink. Well, you just lost some sleep and negated your starving at the same time. It is these cravings that come up at the worst possible times that really get to your body. And again, they are habits, so you won't even realize what you're doing is wrong. So it would be better to nip the problem right in the bud.

Dehydration
If you're too busy to be eating meals, chances are you also won't be drinking enough water. Dehydration leads to headaches, dizziness, sluggishness and an inability to sweat to name a few.

I hope all the reasons given are enough to turn you away from skipping meals. Bear in mind that if you're following a diet plan from a health consultant, trust him/her with your routine; do not skip a meal here or there just because you don't have the time or you want to get thinner fast.
 
 

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