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Skipping Meals / Starvation
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I was going to just touch on this topic but decided to address it as its own entity. Starvation is a dieting method that occurs far too often in our society. Whether it is a deliberate venture at weight loss or inadvertently just not eating because of lack of hunger or a hectic schedule, it is dangerously wrong. You will lose muscle and gain fat because of this problem. Have you noticed your bathroom scale says your weight is the same, but you know you're softer, not as solid as you used to be?
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The human body is very efficient at staying alive. It was meant to survive famine and food shortages by storing food as fat. In hard times, when food was scarce, the body would slow down its metabolism to survive. Muscle is alive and fat is dead. So… Slower metabolism means you burn fewer calories. Burning fewer calories means carrying less muscle tissue. Does this sound like a healthy state to be in? I hope you can appreciate how important muscle is to burning calories and looking and feeling healthy!
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This chapter is written specifically for all of you that do not realize that you are starving. I’ll bet there are millions of starving people in the food rich United States. These starving people are not the poor or the homeless. They are the financially stable, naive, morning coffee drinking, too busy for lunch on time, slim fast drinking, movers and shakers of the world! People that just don’t understand human biology. Anyone out there ever miss a meal and make the statement, “I haven’t eaten since such and such… I’m starving!” That is starvation mode! This does apply to you.
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Low calorie diets or missing meals panic our ancestral survival mode. We unknowingly shed our valuable muscle and adapt to surviving on a birdseed diet. All the while, our brain is blasting out signals of EAT, CONSUME, DEVOUR, GORGE, STUFF… SURVIVE!
And we do survive. We live in a land where food is plentiful. We have more than enough food and eventually we give in to our cravings and we eat. Do we ever eat! Starvation doesn’t only happen in Africa or in concentration camps. It is possible to be in starvation mode and eat a burger and fries everyday! Missing meals makes for slower metabolisms. With a slow metabolism and the lack of muscle that goes with it, eating anything more than that bird seed diet will make fat!
Hopefully you get the point. Still, some people will take this information and think that giving in to the hunger and eating is the bad part. They will think that appetite is a bad thing and eating is the problem. For many people, that is the case. This chapter is not for habitual, compulsive, bored, lonely, munchy, or celebration eaters! I do want everyone, regardless of their personal eating patterns, to understand how the body works. Even over-eating munchers can take too long in between meals and store fat more efficiently.
Your daily bodily functions continue whether you give these cells the building blocks they need or not. There is an unconditional need for protein and this is where the body will adapt. Hair will continue to grow; fingernails will keep getting longer. These are simple examples to show that the body continues with its motions whether you, the owner helps out or not.
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The building block for the building and rebuilding of cells comes from protein. When the body is not fed protein, it gets it elsewhere. This elsewhere is your existing muscle. Your body will breakdown its existing muscles into the proteins it requires for everyday needs. This means that muscle which you have worked so hard to build is quickly and easily lost to the body and it’s own predetermined priorities. If you have not worked so hard to build any muscle, you are in even more trouble!
Besides the loss of muscle tone in the face, arms, legs, etc. from lack of protein, the other huge negative is a certain fat storing enzyme that is released when the body is not fed frequently enough. The all to common drinking of the coffee for breakfast and being too busy for lunch is still starving the body. The body doesn’t know if this is normal or not. If you eat dinner at 6:00 p.m. and miss breakfast and lunch, that works out to be 24 hours without food. When it comes time for dinner, (after 24 hours of starvation), there is no way the body will miss this opportunity to store up some energy in case there is another day of fasting. Whatever you eat, no matter how nutritious, it will be stored for energy. We just had an energy shortage for 24 hours! Of course we will be storing energy!
Stored energy is fat.
Since muscle is alive, it burns up energy. Energy is a requirement for life. If the body thinks it’s starving, which do you think is more important, the stored energy or the muscle that burns it? In and effort to survive, fat stays and the muscle goes! The body can live off its own fat for a long time. It can live even longer if it has less muscle to feed. Even though you will be too weak to function (muscle loss), at least you are still alive!
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Starvation means off with the muscle! Starvation means goodbye to your metabolism. Starvation means food = fat. Starvation hits much closer to home than concentration camps and third world famines. Starvation means missing meals. Starvation is as simple as saying, “Wanna get a bite to eat? I’m starving!” By the time you are hungry, it’s too late! Don’t miss your meals!
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