You are rushing out the door in the morning. Your lunch meeting just ran over, and you didn’t have time to eat. Day after day, you clock out at 6, or even after 7 p.m., only to realize you hadn’t thought about dinner until that point in the day. Those kinds of long days can be taxing on your body, mind, and emotions because your body isn’t fueled. What you feel are some of the consequences of skipping meals

Consequences of Skipping Meals

Ever wondered what happens to your body when you skip meals or head into another busy day without eating? Here’s what happens.

Low Blood Sugar: Feeling rather hangry? When you don’t eat often enough in a day, you’ll experience a drop in blood sugar, or glucose, the main sugar found in your blood. Low blood sugar can make you feel tired, dizzy, sluggish, shaky and like you may pass out. You may even find it hard to concentrate because your brain doesn’t have the fuel it needs to think straight. Glucose is your body’s preferred source of fuel, which comes mainly from food

Resting Metabolic Rate Tanks: When you skip meals, your body enters a state of starvation or fasting. In this state, your brain signals your body to reduce functions to conserve energy and burn fewer calories. This can lead to a slowdown in weight loss, and when you resume normal eating habits, you may regain the weight you lost. In the long run, extended periods of fasting can considerably decrease your metabolism, making weight loss more challenging.

Research indicates that consuming three meals per day can enhance satiety and decrease hunger cues in comparison to diets with higher meal frequency. Adopting this practice can aid in calorie control and help you meet your nutritional requirements without the risk of overeating or indulging in unhealthy eating habits.

Muscle Loss: If you don’t eat enough calories or carbohydrates throughout the day, your muscles can begin breaking down their own proteins for fuel — a process called catabolism. This causes muscle loss over time since muscles are made up largely of protein. So, when you skip meals and go into fasting mode, it’s only natural for your muscles to break down over time because they’re being deprived of nutrients they need to grow and function properly.

Hunger Hormones Rise: The body has natural hormones that act as hunger and fullness signals, indicating when it’s time to eat and when to stop. Disregarding these signals can disrupt several hormones, including insulin, leptin, cortisol, and ghrelin. Skipping meals causes increased production of ghrelin, the hormone responsible for hunger pangs. At the same time, it reduces the production of leptin, the hormone that suppresses appetite, making it difficult to recognize when you are full, which results in overeating or binge eating.

Crave High Calorie Foods: Skipping a meal, results in unhealthy food cravings. Instead of opting for nutrient-dense foods, you will reach for fat and carbohydrate dense foods to provide the body with energy. This leads to increased weight gain over time and nutrient deficiency.

How Not to Skip Meals

The good news is that there are some simple ways to avoid skipping meals—and still stay on top of your work schedule.

Meal Prep: Planning is the best way to avoid skipping meals. Go grocery shopping once a week and stock up on healthy foods. Make sure you have a list of meals that can be prepared quickly. These should be healthy recipes that don’t take long to cook. You can also make double portions and freeze them for later use if necessary. Having healthy foods ready in the fridge will help. So you don’t have to think about what to eat next, or go shopping while hungry.

Prioritize Breakfast: It’s a common practice to skip breakfast, but it can lead to overeating later in the day and cause you to gain weight. Breakfast is an important meal of the day because it helps control blood sugar levels and provides essential nutrients for energy throughout the morning hours. A healthy breakfast should include lean protein such as eggs, Greek yogurt, and nuts. Prepare your breakfast at night so that all you need to do in the morning is grab it and go.

Schedule Lunchtime: It’s important to prioritize taking a break during the workday, and scheduling lunchtime can help with that. Consider blocking off your calendar in the middle of the day to ensure that you don’t overbook yourself. Try to make this a consistent practice, treating lunchtime as a sacred time to recharge and refuel.

While everyone skips meals now and then but making it a habit can have negative consequences for your health. It’s important to prioritize a balanced diet that includes a variety of nutrient-dense foods, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts/seeds, beans/legumes, lean proteins, and healthy fats. Try these tips to eat three meals a day and lose weight while honoring your physiology.