Do NOT skip out on a meal!

BeautifulKristen

Everybody is different. I don't eat much. I am rarely hungry.. I even lose weight. But I did gain because I haven't "worked out" for 2 weeks because of my hip.. Only walking.. (3lbs gain) thats about it. Will know more today at the doctors. Lets hope I can start working out again to a video..

TadaGanIarracht

Fastest way to bring the MFP elitists together on one forum topic? Post a bunch of bulls**t as bait and wait for the nibbles :laugh:

Om nom nom nom. :bigsmile:

texastango

I can not stress this enough! When you skip out on a meal or don't eat all of your calories your body will go into starvation mode and hold onto EVERY calorie it can not knowing when it will be fed again! Trust me, I KNOW.... I didn't eat my calories and GAINED 3 pounds! Now that I am eating ever 2-3 hours with healthy snacks and healthy meals I am losing!!! Every body is not the same, I get that. But, every body DOES and WILL hold onto everything it can! So, Please don't starve yourself to lose weight! It's NOT going to work and you'll only be hurting yourself.

Ok, rant is over...

While your comments are well intentioned, they are incorrect from both scientific and personal experience. There is some validity in what you say, but not the way you're saying it. Let's examine this shall we?

First off, let's take both things that you assume and say, and then things that you imply:

1. Eating speeds up your metabolism and you'll burn more calories....and lose weight.

Eating (especially protein and complex carbs) does speed up your metabolism a bit, but not very much. You'll never burn more over the long haul than the calories your eating. Research also shows on the flip side, dieting slows your metabolism a bit, but in the casual dieter, not very much unless you severely restrict your caloric intake below 800 calories (not 1200 for women and 1500 for men). Now there are other reasons for those restrictions, but I'm not going to cover that here least to say it's so you maintain as much lean body mass/muscle as possible) while dieting.

2. Don't miss a meal (or better yet...eat 5 times a day).

In the extreme...if I were 5 ft tall and 88 lbs. It's going to be very hard for me to eat 5 times a day and get any substantial nutrition at any one sitting. Likewise, if I were 5 ft tall and 400 lbs....it would be near impossible to eat everything I need in one meal. So one size plan does not fit all. In addition, some people feel full if they eat more frequently. For them eating many small meals if they are dieting makes sense. However, some people actually eat more if they eat more frequently and this doesn't help them diet at all.

Insulin sensitivity - Glycogen synthesis - Restoration of Fuel Stores
The advantage to frequent eating and well spaced out protein, carbs, etc is that you prevent large insulin spikes, insulin resistance, and overloading your system and therefore wasting some of the nutrients you take in. In addition, it's been shown that glycogen (the fuel we use to exercise) syntesis rates are highest and most efficient when insulin levels remain fairly constant. So, by eating many times and little amounts with nutrients equally scattered throughout the day....you actually are restoring glycogen in the most efficeint way. If you're an Olympic Athelete like Micheal Phelps..that's important....it helps all of us, just not to the same extent.

3. Starvation Mode: Many dieticians don't believe in this "mode". If you severely restrict calories (ie below 800) your Base Metabolic Rate can slow significantly - by as much as 30 percent. That will make it much harder to lose weight, but you'll still lose if you don't eat...and then you'll die. To this day I've never seen someone get fat from not eating enough. In addition, if our rate of calorie burn increased so significantly when we eat more...and don't miss meals...then we should be able to pig out and our metabolic rates would sky rocket and we'd lose a ton of weight. Sorry, nice thought. Just doens't work that way.

4. Plateaus - In part you plateau because when you start losing weight, you burn off the glycogen in your liver (about 100 grams) and then in your muscle (about 250 grams) and when you burn glycogen you lose water with it. So you get this quick weight loss. Then it seems as if everything you do..doing the same thing that brought the loss ...doesn't work...well, to burn more you have to either eat less (by approximately 200 cals) or exercise more or more intensely. That will break the plateau.

If you wish some references or things to read or have questions...feel free to ask. This was an emotional statement..and I know you were trying to be helpful. Keep reading. You'll learn as you go.








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Jotell

I will repost this since you people who joined in later didn't read everything on this post. Which there are a LOT of posts to read so I wouldn't expect you to see this:

Thank you EVERYONE for all of your great responses! I will be taking notes of everything and taking them with me to the nutritionists I will be seeing tomorrow as part of my class project. SideSteal, if it is alright with you, there was another post you had done with the Don't and Does Not. Would you be ok with my copying that information down as well?
This has been a great experiment for me to see who has what opinions! Thank you everyone for adding your advice and opinions!

SaebraSpirit

To be honest weight loss is determined by so many underlying factors like water levels, BMI, BMR, exercise and calorie intake.
Everyone's body suits a different plan, I only eat around 600-700 calories daily and I eat healthy cereal for breakfast then usually salad or sandwiches for lunch and then i don't feel like a dinner. I can even eat the odd ice-cream or small cake slice and galaxy chocolate bars and still loose the weight. I also go jogging for 30mins a day and I'm pretty much walking or being active all day. If I feel exceedingly hungry then of course i eat a bit of fruit or some other healthy snack. This plan is working wonders for me so far as I've lost 5 pounds in one week which is awesome
So whatever works best i suppose, the body doesn't go into a dramatic survival mode when it misses one meal :P I remember when i was a kid and i went to bed without dinner for being 'bad' haha I didn't suddenly change or gain weight!

AntWrig

To be honest weight loss is determined by so many underlying factors like water levels, BMI, BMR, exercise and calorie intake.
Everyone's body suits a different plan, I only eat around 600-700 calories daily and I eat healthy cereal for breakfast then usually salad or sandwiches for lunch and then i don't feel like a dinner. I can even eat the odd ice-cream or small cake slice and galaxy chocolate bars and still loose the weight. I also go jogging for 30mins a day and I'm pretty much walking or being active all day. If I feel exceedingly hungry then of course i eat a bit of fruit or some other healthy snack. This plan is working wonders for me so far as I've lost 5 pounds in one week which is awesome
So whatever works best i suppose, the body doesn't go into a dramatic survival mode when it misses one meal :P I remember when i was a kid and i went to bed without dinner for being 'bad' haha I didn't suddenly change or gain weight!

600-700....

Crochetluvr

Drink water, pee LESS?? What?!

The liver is not the only organ that rids the body of toxins, ask anybody in renal failure.

Try it.....try drinking a glass of water and then measure how much comes out when you pee....it wont be as much as you drank. If it were, why would we need to drink water at all? Some of it is retained for use by the body.

Water is not a diuretic. It does aid in removing toxins by being used for sweat. But whatever you pee is excess not needed by the body.

And I never said the liver was the ONLY organ that rids the body of toxins, just the principle one....the kidneys and the skin do as well.

Sublog

I can not stress this enough! When you skip out on a meal or don't eat all of your calories your body will go into starvation mode and hold onto EVERY calorie it can not knowing when it will be fed again! Trust me, I KNOW.... I didn't eat my calories and GAINED 3 pounds! Now that I am eating ever 2-3 hours with healthy snacks and healthy meals I am losing!!! Every body is not the same, I get that. But, every body DOES and WILL hold onto everything it can! So, Please don't starve yourself to lose weight! It's NOT going to work and you'll only be hurting yourself.

Ok, rant is over...

LMAO... Strong confusion! ^^^

Let's just say you are mistaken. Don't confuse what you think happens with what really happens. Science and common sense disagrees with you.

Bob314159

Its not common sense- this place is filled with warnings about starvation mode - see my post above where MFP tells me I'm at risk

beebee0925

bump

Jotell

Again, This has been a great experiment for me to see who has what opinions! Thank you everyone for adding your advice and opinions! This experiment has been for those who have strong opinions about different ways of eating. This is a project for my school and I knew by typing what I myself PERSONAL believe in (doesn't matter what you do, if it works for you than great!) would get the strongly opinionated people onto this thread. I am taking EVERYTHING that has been written in this thread with me. Your names will be included as I am not taking credit for anything that has been written. So if there is something that you do NOT like on this thread that you have posted please let me know and I will omit it.