Eating Less Doesn't Always Mean Losing Weight

The way most people go about losing weight is to eat very little, usually by skipping breakfast or lunch, or both. But this only has the effect of slowing your metabolism so you require less calories, which makes losing weight more difficult. This is made worse when the body enters what is known as starvation or survival mode.

This comes about when the daily calorie intake is less than the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), which is the minimum amount of calories needed each day.

Fearing that food has become scarce the body adapts to this in several ways.

• With the level of available carbohydrates predictably low, energy stores are rapidly depleted. Glucose can be manufactured by the body though only if amino acids are available, but as they come from protein, which will also be in short supply, the only other source is the body's own muscle.

The cause of starvation mode is eating less calories than your BMR figure, and this is usually the problem most people have when they try to lose weight. The solution is eat more!