Skipping a meal is part of the advice that can be read here or there. But is it really a good idea to refine your silhouette? Answers with Corinne Fernandez, dietitian nutritionist in Paris.
To lose weight, some are ready to test everything. Diets, diets, deletion of food categories are springing up everywhere this season.
It is an idea deeply rooted in people’s minds. Skipping a meal would make you lose weight because if you don’t eat, you will lose weight. At least that’s what a majority of slimming candidates imagine.
Skipping meals can cause weight gain
Yet this is absolutely false and it is even the opposite that can occur: that is to say weight gain or at least stagnation. “Skipping meals slows down the life of our cells. For them to work properly, you have to replenish a stock every day, and it’s not by skipping meals that you get there. Especially since this bad habit contributes to slow down the metabolismtherefore the ability to burn calories”, emphasizes Corinne Fernandez.
Feelings of hunger and satiety are disrupted
Skipping the lunch, dinner or breakfast stage can therefore simply disrupt the body. With several harmful consequences. First, an upheaval in eating habits. The feeling of hunger will increase, and give rise to harmful behaviors such as loss of control. We will thus make up for the lack of the previous meal by eating more quantities. And not prioritizing quality. “When we haven’t had lunch, for example, we will be so hungry in the afternoon that we can rush on everything we find. Ready-to-eat, easy-to-eat foods. So often industrial high in sugar and fat. This opens the door to an uncontrolled diet, conducive to development of irrational eating urges or behaviors“, warns the expert. We will therefore absorb more calories than necessary and therefore fill our cells with fat: the opposite of what we wanted.
Deprived of food, the body begins to store more
Apart from this harmful effect, there are many others. If you deprive the body of food, it will trigger a “fear” reaction by adopting a protective mechanism. “If we are able to deprive the body of food, it will store everything at the next meal, or even more, for fear that this deprivation will start again… And burn less and less calories, or even more at all, and accumulate fat and therefore weight. This suppression of meals is finally assimilated to an aggression of the body”, says Corinne Fernandez.
Fatigue and trouble concentrating
In addition, when the body does not benefit from calorie intake, it experiences an energy deficit. And he finds it in food among other things. This will lead to a certain lethargy, sluggish reflexes or even slight physical fatigue. As for concentration, it may also be affected by even a temporary lack of food. the brain also feeds on what you bring to it through food. And by being deprived of its fuel, its functions will slow down, and among them your ability to concentrate. So if you don’t have lunch, it’s no surprise if you spend an afternoon struggling to work.
“The body likes regularity and balance. If you eat too much at one meal, immediately resume a normal or moderate diet at the next one. This way we send the body the right signals, and we avoid disturbances of all kinds” , concludes the dietitian. If you want to lose weight, therefore, the rule of regular meals always remains the norm.
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