WHY SHOULD I EAT IF I’M NOT HUNGRY? PART II

When you support your metabolism by eating enough food and getting enough rest, your body will burn a combination of your protein, vegetables, fruit and fat from your diet along with some stored body fat. Your body uses up the calories (or energy) you’ve eaten and stored within your digestive tract, muscle and liver cells; then it will move to your fat stores for more energy. This is what happens in a normal “fed” state.

When your body is well-fed, the normal secretion of insulin (which is one of the two most important regulators of your metabolism) takes place. Insulin stimulates the storage of glucose and helps create proteins to maintain muscle, both of which keep your metabolism running nicely.

Your liver also helps by limiting the amount of blood sugar or glucose that is available in the blood and storing it away as something called glycogen to be used later as a back-up fuel when food is scarce. It is your body’s survival mechanism for times of famine. This process helps to manage your hunger signals that are responsible for curbing your appetite when you have more than enough body fat stored.

Once your body begins to detect it is in starvation mode due to low-calorie intake, it goes to lean tissue and muscle to be broken down into glucose as an energy source, instead of stored fat or glycogen. In an attempt to make sure you have enough fuel to survive, your body will sacrifice protein from your muscle tissue and leave you with a slower metabolism, making it harder to keep weight off long-term.

Your appetite can also go through the roof when you go into starvation mode, leading to strong cravings – including sugar addiction. In this situation, your body seeks more carbohydrate-dense foods as it desperately tries to acquire more glucose to survive.

In addition to the issues noted above, starvation mode can also affect your body’s weight “set point.” The set-point theory suggests that your body weight is regulated by a predetermined or preferred level specific for your body and genetics. Basically, it implies that we all have a natural weight range that our bodies try to stay within by regulating metabolism and hunger levels. It’s all about body chemistry, once again.

When you engage in low-calorie eating and begin to experience a slower metabolism, fatigue and hunger (all of which are symptoms of being in starvation mode), indicate that your body is attempting to return to its natural set point. It is very hard to stay outside the range of your body’s own set point for a long time if you’re not eating properly. Your body’s preferred weight and fat balance tries to maintain itself with powerful hormones and neurotransmitters.

Your body’s control center in the brain decides if you are getting enough energy and rest based on how much you are eating. It then sends signals to your body to either increase or decrease hunger or food intake and even determines how much energy it will allow you to expend – meaning it will slow you down to conserve energy if you aren’t getting enough, or increase metabolism if there is enough food intake.

While you focus on starving yourself to try and lose weight by maintaining a too low-calorie diet, your body’s chemistry is working against your efforts by making you hungry and slowing you down with fatigue in order to get back to that set-point. Chronic dieters have usually placed themselves in this mode so many times that they can end up moving further away from their natural set point and further into starvation mode.

We are paying for it now – as individuals and as a country. If you want to know how you can turn this around, check back next week.