Skipping meals and eating too few calories
While it’s true that you need to create a reasonable calorie deficit within your diet in order to see physical changes in your body over time, skipping meals or following a strict, low-calorie diet is simply not the way to go if you want to preserve your metabolism. These mistakes will hinder your ability to actually achieve a sustainable transformation.
“When you skip a meal, your body realizes that there is no influx of energy so it begins to conserve as much energy as it can,” explains Rios. “This translates to a slower metabolism, meaning your body burns less fat. Skipping meals or long-term fasting periods can result in a slower metabolism.”
Your metabolism is one of the key factors in determining how easily your body will be able to burn through food as fuel, so maintaining an efficient metabolism through a healthy diet will make it easier to create that calorie deficit without ever depriving yourself of foods you love. Listening to your hunger cues and regularly fueling your body when it lets you know it needs energy will be the best way to preserve your metabolism, and it’s worth noting that once this function has sustained damage it can be very difficult to reverse it.
One of the biggest ways that your metabolism becomes damaged is skipping meals or waiting too long to eat, effectively ignoring hunger cues. “In order to avoid this from happening, aim to be consistent with meal times,” suggests Rios. “Avoid going more than five hours without eating a meal or snack and aim to have three balanced meals a day with one to two snacks in-between.” Consistently fueling your body will not only provide you with enough energy to feel great throughout the day, but it will also give your metabolism a natural boost and, if you’re consuming nutrient dense foods, make it even easier to lose weight.
“Don't skip meals to save calories,” registered dietitian Debbie Bessen agrees. Bessen notes that in addition to ruining your metabolism, skipping meals may also cause you to overcompensate with fatty foods later in the day. “Skipping often opens the door to over-indulgence later,” she says. Instead, she recommends loading your meals with non-starchy vegetables. “This strategy will fill you up without adding to the caloric count of the day,” Bessen explains.
It isn’t just skipping entire meals that can have adverse effects on your weight loss journey, though. Paulina Lee MSHS, RD, LD notes that any highly restrictive low-calorie diet can also slow your metabolism and make it difficult to lose weight over time. “Being on a super restrictive low-calorie diet could actually slow your metabolism because the lack of calories causes your body to look for other sources of energy, like your muscles,” she explains. “When it gets into this survival mode of trying to reserve energy stores from the minimal nutrients you're feeding your body, your metabolism slows. So it's important to maintain a healthy diet with the right amount of calories to nourish your body and any activity you do.”
If you’ve noticed that after restricting your food intake for an extended period of time you now have a lessened appetite, this may be due to a slowed metabolism, so fueling your body every few hours until you can begin to trust your hunger cues again can help to repair the damage done. “It can be difficult to eat when you’re not hungry, so start by adding small balanced snacks if you’re unable to eat a full meal. Choose a snack that is high in protein and fiber, such as nuts paired with berries,” says Rios.
A calorie deficit may be needed to achieve weight loss, but you do need to continue to eat enough food to fuel yourself in order to create results that you can maintain. Eating a balanced diet will not only increase your metabolism and make it easier to lose weight, but it will also make you feel better throughout the day, actively fighting against the restrictive and dangerous method of weight loss.