UNDER EATING

UNDER EATING

Our bodies are amazingly adaptable.  They can overcome just about everything we throw at it. 

 → Did you know that if you chronically under eat you can disrupt your body’s metabolism?

Under eating means consuming LESS calories than you are burning.  Also known as dieting.  If you’ve been on a diet for an extended period or have gone through many bouts of extreme dieting, your body knows it and it adapts to the lower food intake.

So what does that mean and why do we care?

Since our bodies eventually adapt to the number of calories that we eat, it means that to continue to lose weight, you would have to continue to reduce your caloric intake to keep losing weight.  The problem is that if your body has already adapted to an extremely low calorie intake, you may not realistically be able to cut calories to spur fat loss without compromising your overall health.

So what do we do about it?

Well it’s HIGHLY individualized based on each person’s current energy needs and their history with diets, but in short, we have to try and restore their metabolism back to a somewhat normal range before we even talk about cutting calories.  We need to make their bodies adapt slowly over time to having more calories to deal with (aka speeding up their metabolism).

It’s a long term fix because it’s a long term problem, but it’s the right thing to do. Throwing someone on a diet isn’t always the answer. 

If you have any questions about under eating, feel free to send us a message or comment below. As always, let us know how we can help.