Weight loss can be a slow process. In fact, successful weight loss is almost always a slow process.

Losing weight too fast is usually a sure sign that your body won’t be able to keep up that pace, and you’re likely to regain everything you’ve lost.

So, slow and steady wins the race. But that’s hard.

Let’s be honest, we live in a world of instant gratification, and when the numbers on the scale aren’t moving in the right direction as quickly as we want them to, we’re bound to look for shortcuts.

Maybe we should try a crash diet. Maybe we will intensify our workouts. Maybe we should start skipping meals.

Bad ideas.

Why? Because some things in life really do require patience and consistency, and weight loss is definitely one of them.

Let’s look at four different reasons why skipping meals can actually hurt your weight loss efforts.

Believe it or not, one way to speed up your metabolism is to eat! Now, of course, there are several caveats after that statement:

1) You should be eating foods which fuel your body.

2) You should maintain a calorie deficit each day in relation to your activity level and your energy expenditure.

3) You should be mindful while eating to help ensure that you make good choices and stop eating when you feel full.

In other words, the term “eating fuels your metabolism,” isn’t a golden ticket to eat whatever you want.

You should keep doing what you’re doing in terms of making healthy choices and maintaining a small calorie deficit. It’s that calorie deficit part which trips a lot of people up.

What’s a really easy way to cut 300 or 400 calories out of your day? Just skip an entire meal!

However, by skipping that meal you are allowing your metabolism to slow down while your body scrambles to preserve the calories you do have.

When your body thinks your next meal isn’t coming, it’s more likely to store excess calories rather than shed them.

Eating at regular intervals throughout the day helps reassure your body that you aren’t starving and allows your system to work the way it’s intended to.

So, you’ve made it through an entire work day without eating a thing. Just a quick breakfast before you made it to the office, and nothing else since then.

Now it’s time to hit the gym, and suddenly your motivation evaporates before your eyes. The thought of running, lifting weights, or doing your interval training feels daunting and impossible.

In fact, it feels so impossible that you’re just going to go ahead and give yourself the night off. Did you catch what’s happening there? In skipping lunch, you might think that you’re making yourself leaner, but all you’re doing is allowing yourself to run on an empty tank. That’s not good for your car, and it’s not good for you either.

When our coaches notice a client moving sluggishly, one of the first questions asked is, “When is the last time you ate?”.

When you eat, you not only fuel your body, but also your brain. Vitamins, minerals, complex carbohydrates, dietary fat, protein…it helps to think of these things as energy.

If you deprive your body of energy, then that energy won’t be there when it’s time to expend it during a workout.

Eat healthy balanced meals throughout the day to make sure you can hit your workout every time.

Again, if you decide to try an experiment and skip meals for, say, one week, you may see the scale moving down quickly at first. This is the place where some people get excited and decide they stumbled onto a great secret of weight loss.

They haven’t.

The lower numbers you’re seeing on the scale are due to one of two things:

1) Your limited food intake is causing you to lose water weight.

2) Your body may have started burning lean muscle instead of fat. Our bodies are the result of millions of years of evolution.

Living in a world where nutritious and high-quality food is always guaranteed is an extremely recent turn of events.

Every single system in our body was formed during a time where energy conservation was a top priority, and starvation was a legitimate and daily risk for everyone.

When your body senses that the next meal isn’t coming, it begins storing fat, not burning it.

Fat stores are what will keep you alive longer, so it’s actually burning all that lean muscle you’ve worked so hard for in the gym.

You can alleviate this by doing three things:

1) Eating at regular intervals. By having regular meal times, your body will know what to expect and does not have to worry about when food is coming next.

2) Eating enough protein. If you want to lose weight, you do have to cut calories. But the type of calories you cut matters! If you cut protein, you are more likely to lose muscle. Now this does not mean that an "all-protein" diet is the way to go. I just mean that you need to make sure you are keeping your protein at normal, healthy ranges while cutting out things like processed carbs and unhealthy fats.

3) Lifting weights. When you start to lose weight, you can help avoid muscle loss by strength training. By challenging your muscles, you will be letting your body and brain know that your muscles are a priority. You need them to do all this heavy lifting! So by strength training, your body will be forced to look elsewhere for energy (aka start using fat for fuel!).

Newsflash: skipping meals makes you feel hungry. Sometimes, extremely hungry.

Now, hunger isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s our body’s way of telling us that we require more fuel to keep functioning.

However, when you let hunger exceed a comfortable point, your brain goes into a bit of a panic. It needs food now!

What this looks like in practice is usually a small healthy breakfast, nothing for lunch, and an extremely full dinner (with dessert!) which overshoots your calorie goal by a decent margin.

You can avoid the restrict/binge cycle by simply refusing to participate in it.

Fuel your body at regular intervals, and you won’t be as tempted to overdo it at your next meal.

Again, slow and steady wins the race when it comes to weight loss. Instead of focusing on the “slow” part of that phrase, focus on the “steady.” The scale may not be dropping as quickly as you want, but take a look back at your long-term data.

As long as you’re trending downwards, you’re making great progress in your weight loss! Attempting to speed things up through tricks like skipping meals is only going to backfire.

Intermittent fasting has received a lot of press in recent years, so it's worth talking about here.

To be fair, this can actually have great results, but there are some important details that you need to know before starting:

• Men tend to get better results than women with this approach.
• The best way to approach this is to skip breakfast and then have consistent meals the rest of the day. Eating within an 8-10 hour window and still getting the right amount of calories is key.
• Intermittent fasting is not meant to be done every day. Yes, it can be used successfully for a short term goal of losing weight (4-6 weeks), but to maintain that weight loss, you need to know how to transition to a more consistent eating plan. This might include doing 1-2 days per week as there are benefits to fasting, but it is important to have normal eating days most of the time.

So, while intermittent fasting can be great when used correctly, you need to know what you are doing.

You also need to remember that just because you are reducing your hours of eating does not mean that you can eat whatever you want!

You still need to focus on getting in quality protein and fat, lots of veggies, and taking it easy on processed foods and alcohol.

If skipping meals is not the way to lose weight, what is??

I have mentioned a few key ideas already, so first let's review those and then I will add in a couple extra ideas:

• Eat at consistent times throughout the day
• Add strength training to your exercise routine (2-3x/week)
• Eat slowly and stop when you are no longer hungry (rather than when you are full)
• Eat some protein with every meal

If you are going to try out intermittent fasting, do it for no more than 4 weeks, and then switch to a 1-2x/week routine

These are all great ways to get started, but there are other things you can do as well.

Here are just a few things to consider:

• Make sure you are drinking enough water
• Track your calories for 3 days to get an idea of how much you are eating
• Reduce your alcohol intake
• Cook most of your meals
• Eat lots and lots of veggies

The key when it comes to losing weight is to just start doing one thing that you know is helping.

Don't worry if you actually lose weight right away, because the goal is not to lose weight quickly just to put it back on. The goal is to lose weight and keep it off!

Now if you need direction knowing where to start with your diet, or need someone to introduce strength training to you in a way that is smart and safe, we can help!

Right now you can sign up for our 28-Day Kickstart Program where you will get the exact diet plan and exercises you need to start feeling better while having a coach to keep you accountable to your plan.

In this program you will get:

• Full fitness and goals assessment
• Personalized fitness coaching to teach you the exact exercises you need to safely and effectively move better and build stamina
• A simple meal plan to help you decrease inflammation
• 1-on-1 success coaching to help guide you as you work to change your diet, exercise, and lifestyle habits

Just know that you can lose weight, get stronger, and have more energy, you just need a program that can show you what is right for you.

Click here to learn more and take back control of your health and fitness today!

Mint Condition Fitness empowers people to take control of their fitness and fully enjoy the life they have built.