Are you a meal skipper? Many patients, when they first come to me, admit to engaging in this behavior regularly. They believe that if they skip a meal, at the end of the day they will have consumed fewer calories and that will help them lose weight. Unfortunately that never seems to be the case.
Now there’s confirmation: A recent study out of Yale University and the Southern University of California found that if you allow your body to run on empty you’re more likely to overeat. “Our results suggest that obese individuals may have a limited ability to inhibit the impulsive drive to eat, especially when glucose levels drop below normal,” wrote Kathleen A. Page, M.D., assistant professor of clinical medicine at the University of Southern California and one of the lead authors of the paper.
Does this mean, then, you should be eating all day long? Not exactly – but creating a schedule that includes three meals and two or three snacks can keep binge-abetting hunger in check. Here’s how to do that.
Fuel up first thing. Try to eat within one hour of waking. The longer you wait to eat, the hungrier you’re likely to get, and so you may eat more than is healthy. If you really aren’t hungry first thing in the morning, you don’t have to eat a huge breakfast, just something to get you started. Think of it this way — you can’t run a car on empty, the same way you can’t run your body without food.
