No matter how healthy you are now, it’s likely that you’ve indulged in a few bad eating habits in your lifetime. It’s perfectly natural to look for shortcuts or neglect the way you eat because sometimes it’s not something you think about on a regular basis. And let’s not make things too dramatic here – it’s important to realize that eating a muffin or cookie from time to time is not going to kill you.
But there are certain things that you can do on a regular basis that will put your health in jeopardy if you aren’t careful. Sometimes people have bad eating habits because they simply don’t know any better, while other folks know exactly what they’re doing but have weight loss in mind. It’s essential that you understand you can’t fool your body on a long-term basis, so purposeful bad eating habits are going to come back to bite you in the end.
Skipping meals – we’ve all done this from time to time and it’s increasingly difficult to make sure you have three square meals a day in today’s fast-paced world. Usually the meal that comes as a casualty is breakfast since people barely have enough time to shower before rushing to the office for a long day of work. Obviously skipping breakfast is not going to kill you and you can get away with it for the foreseeable future. But it might help to take a look at the benefits of eating breakfast so that you can assess whether or not it’s worth making a change. By eating breakfast you set yourself up with the calories you need to start the day off well, in addition to giving your metabolism a boost right from the start. Skipping breakfast on the other hand, will likely lead you to eat more throughout the day and disrupt your overall metabolism in the process. The only thing you should really skip is high cholesterol foods or things with too much sodium, fat, or needless calories. Taking out too many nutrients will also put you in a position where you can have imbalance that requires foods high in iron or other supplements.
Many experts these days are encouraging people to eat breakfast in addition to supplementing their daily diets with more healthy food choices for snacks throughout the day. The reason is that you can increase your overall metabolism and keep yourself fuelled for a longer period of time if you eat fat burning foods. Remember that it all boils down to science and so as long as you don’t consume more calories than you burn, you aren’t going to gain any weight. And if weight loss is your ultimate goal you can use this to their advantage as well. Sometimes it’s hard for people to get their heads wrapped around the fact that you can actually eat more often and lose weight in the process. The main lesson is that depriving yourself of food is not the best way to go, and skipping meals entirely won’t do you any favors in the long run.
The Beginning of Yo-yo Dieting
- Here is personal experience with yo-yo dieting of my good friend Cindy Nielsen, Madison, Wisconsin
When I was young I would skip meals all the time because that’s what my friends were doing. It seems so easy to keep myself trim by choosing not to eat, and it seemed like basic science to me. Of course I didn’t know the damage I was doing to my body and I was making things worse by pursuing diet supplements and different types of fad diets as well. I thought if I could simply limit my eating patterns in addition to looking for the latest ways to lose weight, then I couldn’t help but be skinny. There was so much competition for my friends to lose weight, although we were all more concerned about ourselves than we were with each other. I suppose it’s a part of growing up, and something related to being a girl in high school as well. There is so much pressure to look great and to resemble the images you see in television. Even though guys say they prefer girls with a bit of meat on the bones, sometimes girls do things to impress other girls. This is absolutely true of weight loss, and I found myself trying to want to get thin for the benefit of my friends.
My plan actually worked for quite some time and I experienced good results from not eating. I didn’t know much about telling the difference between weight loss myths and fact. Of course the term “good” has to be qualified by the fact I am only talking about weight loss. From a scientific point of view, I was doing a lot of damage to my body and I would pay for it in the long run. But for a while things seem to be going great and I was just a stint as anyone else. I was able to curb my hunger using sheer willpower, and sometimes I was throwing a bit of exercise as well. It wasn’t until I reach my college years that my eating patterns caught up with me.
I suppose it was due in part to the fact that my metabolism was slowing and I was getting older. Eventually my plan of not eating just didn’t work anymore. I found myself getting hungry and not being able to resist the temptation to absolutely pig out. Instead of going weeks of starving myself, I was now only able to do it every once in a while and they were huge eating sessions in between. Eventually I started to put on weight, and no matter how hard I try to starve myself it wouldn’t stay off. In fact, my metabolism was so damaged that I started to pack on the pounds as each year went by. Sometimes I was able to curb the weight gain by forcing myself not to eat and skipping a lot of meals. But even after several months of success I would always go back to the way things were. It was the epitome of yo-yo dieting, and my body was suffering. It wasn’t long before my weight became a real issue and I know it wouldn’t have gotten this bad if I have learned better dieting habits sooner. These days I still struggle with a healthy diet but I make sure not to starve myself. I’ve experienced first hand the negative effects of trying to use shortcuts for weight loss. If you are thinking about using starvation diets or skipping meals in an effort to lose weight, you should better reconsider it. You might be able to get away with it for a little while, possibly even for several years, but it always gets back to you.
