Are You Slowing Down Your Own Metabolism?
What others are reading:
Calories are fuel for your body. If you don’t give your body enough fuel, it will start to slow down your metabolism to conserve energy because it thinks you’re starving. When your metabolism is in this slowed state, it’s called “starvation mode.”
The second your body starts to run low on energy, your body slows and enters starvation mode. Some days you burn more calories than others- you work out more one day, walked around more often than usual, or perhaps you laid down all day because you were sick. Perhaps you conserved energy (calories) on that day you were sick, but used them up, plus some, on the day you started feeling better. Even though you ate 1700 calories on that day you worked out, you only consumed 500 calories the day you were sick (I’m guessing you ate some bad sushi the night before). It is still possible for you to enter starvation mode on the day you ate 1700 calories, because you burned 4,000 calories through your BMR and activity.
This is also why restrictive diets, or having binges and then restricting severely to make up for it are such a bad idea. It slows your metabolism, but then you eat a massive amount of calories, causing your body to hold onto them for dear life.
A lot of people claim they aren’t hungry in the morning, and try to take full advantage, skipping breakfast and waiting for the hunger to kick in that afternoon. A lot of people love this and think it will help them lose weight, because they are consuming fewer total calories.
It is more likely than not that if you aren’t very hungry in the morning, it is because you are already in starvation mode. Your body weakens your appetite so that you don’t waste calories to go try and find something to eat (think back to caveman days when we had to actually hunt our food).
Eating consistently throughout the day is the only way to keep you metabolism running smoothly. Don’t skip meals, especially breakfast, because it wakes your metabolism up to burn the maximum number of calories per day.
If your metabolism is running efficiently, you can eat more calories and lose more weight than if you restrict and eat fewer calories.
Eat more and lose weight. Sounds too good to be true, but it is, if you take care of your metabolism.