We all know that cutting calories is an effective way to lose weight (and that controlling them is essential for maintaining a healthy body weight), which makes It tempting to skip meals from time to time — but doing that can have negative effects on your body and its overall health and wellbeing. In theory, skipping meals might seem like the quickest solution when you’re having a hard time sticking to your diet but, in reality, avoiding food can cause you more harm than good. With that said here are reasons that skipping meals is a bad idea.
Nutrition Deficiency
Skipping meals on a regular basis also means that you are eating less than you are supposed to or what your body requires. This affects your body and decreases your overall nutrient intake making you vulnerable to various nutritional deficiencies.
Hormonal changes
Infrequent eating can cause unsafe drops in blood sugar. Your body can usually maintain a relatively stable level after one skipped meal but frequent and recurring low blood sugar (which can occur if you skip meals more regularly) can cause hormonal changes. And, low blood sugar can make you feel both weak and dizzy. Avoid feeling like this by keeping a healthy snack on hand for times when you can’t eat a meal.
Constipation
Repetitive dieting can lead to chronic constipation. Your stomach and intestines are muscles and when you don’t use them, they lose their strength and become inefficient. Eating regularly stimulates peristalsis (the contracting of your digestive tract to move food through) and skipping meals makes it hard for your GI tract to keep functioning at its best.
Overeating
When you skip a meal and you’re not used to it you can become much hungrier than you’re used to. This means when you reach your next meal your ability to make sensible food choices is diminished.
Couple this with the feeling that you need to compensate by eating more than you normally would to satisfy your hunger and ‘make up for it and it’s easy to see how this can make reaching your goals much more difficult.
Your Metabolism Slows
Sometimes skipping a meal can have the opposite of its intended effect. When you skip meals, your body doesn’t act as efficiently as it should, and your metabolism slows down. So, what was intended as a shortcut to losing weight can actually make it harder to lose weight due to a slower metabolism? Your body wants you to eat on a consistent basis and will reward you with a faster metabolism.
Headaches, dizziness, and nausea
High blood pressure and hypoglycemia can cause severe migraines and headaches. Skipping meals can also result in nausea, sweating, and in some cases, fainting.
Fatigue, depression, and low-performance levels
If you’re feeling hungry because you’ve skipped a meal, you may experience temporary depression, fatigue, and low energy. Your body needs fuel to function properly. Your body is just like a car that needs fuel to run. If your body runs out of fuel, it will not function properly.
Bad hunger breath
When a person skips meals a chemical reaction, ketoacidosis starts to happen. The body begins to break down these chemicals and an unpleasant odor begins to brew. An empty stomach reduces the production of saliva. We know that saliva helps in flushing away mouth bacteria, if there is less saliva production, bacteria will multiply and will cause bad breath.
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