Will one meal per day truly slow down metabolism?
So my wife is mad at me all the time lately because I have been eating only at dinner. Skipping breakfast and eating maybe a bannana or apple for lunch. I have been losing a great deal of weight doing this. Roughly 3-4 pounds per week. I also go to the gym 5 days a week in the early morning and workout until the machines tell me I have burned ~1100-1500 calories (you enter your weight and age). Its just that this way I can enjoy a truly massive meal without concerning myself with calorie counting, because there’s no way in heck I’ll eat more than my daily allowance including my excercize. This all arose because I frequently found myself eating dinner just because my wife made it, or we were out together, not because I was hungry. Is this truly going to slow down my metabolism to a creep? Or is this a decent way of going about weight loss?
I am 6 foot, and currently 198 lbs.
Look, by “truly massive” I’m just saying it doesn’t look like a meal someone on a “diet” would eat. Its usually whatever my wife cooks. Last night it was wonton soup and fried rice. How can I be losing muscle when I’m regualarly escersizing them at the gym? I do weights in addition to the cardio, a couple days a week. I’m glad you lost 100 pounds, I’ve lost 33 so far.
I was offended at the tone of your post Hannibal, you could use a social skills trainer.
Tags:down,Meal,metabolism,slow,truly
Yes, you can. Metabolism is like a fireplace. It will work FAR more efficiently if you burn little, hot fires throughout the day, rather than throwing-on a huge log to smolder in the evening.
MUCH congratulations to you for losing the weight that you have! Kudos and keep up the great work! But, I’m sure that your body would burn more calories if it didn’t think that it were *starving* for twenty hours each day.
There’s an old middle-eastern saying. “You should eat breakfast like a king, lunch as a commoner and dinner as a pauper.”
metabolism feeds off of a regular caloric intake – your metabolism is fueled by the calories. but be aware of how many calories you take in which creates energy and heat (french derivation of heat is calorie). be choosy in what you eat, restricting intake will slow your metabolism and your basal metabolic rate
1. Yes, it will slow your metabolism down.
2. You cannot save up all your calories, like you’re trying here. You’re saving up all your calories and hoping to cash in on a “truly massive meal” at the end of the day. I’m not sure why you think that you need to eat a truly massive meal at all, but I’ll tell you, it’s not good. Throwing that many calories in your face at once pisses off your stomach. It doesn’t care if you haven’t eaten all day, it simply cannot metabolize that much food at once, especially after it hasn’t had to work all day. Because of this, you’re storing a lot of it as fat. You’re telling me you’re losing weight, but this kind of diet/exercise “program” you’re on is telling me that your weight loss is primarily coming from muscle, not fat. How much are you enjoying that massive meal now?
3. The machines’ calculations are all well and good, but unless you’re actually changing your workouts almost daily, your body is beyond used to it now. Repetition is what our bodies love, because we can figure out how to do something more efficiently, burning fewer calories. I’m also concerned that your 5-day-a-week routine consists ONLY of cardio. This will also lead to being “skinny-fat,” which is when your body eats a lot of muscle, leaving you thinner but flabby. Skinny-fat people may fit into smaller jeans than you do, but have all the same complaints of love handles, flabby arms, a soft belly pooch, and no definition.
In short, this is not a decent way of going about weight loss. All metabolism aside, what about nutrition? Are you truly feeding your body all it needs when you’re not eating during the day and then just cramming your face with a meal whose only prerequisite is size?
That’s the short and skinny(-fat) of it.
Your body needs about 1200 calories a day to keep your brain and internal organs functioning. If you go below that (which, with all that exercise and relatively small amount of food consumed, you probably are, at least on some days), then your body begins to store fat and burn protein, including your own muscle fibers. It does so to try to store up as much energy (fat has the most energy) for your important body functions.