January 25, 2025 • 5 mins
While reducing calorie intake is viewed as an easy way to lose weight, skipping meals altogether comes with its own share of downsides.
Over the last few years, people have limited their eating times and leaned on intermittent fasting to lose weight, but these lifestyle choice can have negative impacts on your metabolism and overall health.
Naturopath and wellness expert Erin O'Hara explains the benefits and drawbacks of skipping meals - and how to make it work for your lifestyle.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News TALKS'DB.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
It is time for Wellness and joining me now is
Erin O'Hara. Good morning, Good morning. So we've been talking
about fasting for quite a while, the or skipping meals.
It's quite a popular strategy for weight loss. But we're
learning a lot more about it, aren't we, and whether
it's what sort of impact it's having on us, and
whether it might be the right thing for someone to do.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Yeah, I think it's been a really trendy thing over
quite a few years now, with intervended fasting or time
restrictive eating, where people are only eating within a certain
time window, maybe fasting for sixteen hours, eating within eight
hours or something like that. And there's so many different
combinations that people do around restrictive eating, and it's a
(00:54):
really interesting one because for some people it actually does work,
and for other people it's just a disaster. Is that
they fast and then they eat, and then when they eat,
they realize, oh my god, I'm so hungry. That they
eat everything the sun and all the wrong stuff, and
actually it doesn't help them in the long term as well.
And also my other big hesitation around it is it
(01:14):
creates that sort of yogo dieting kind of doing it
and then oh the wheels of the way I can
fall off eat anything and actually doesn't really create weight
loss and improve your health when you can't really stick
to it. And that's why I think there's sort of
no one right way to do it for everyone. And
actually you've got to look at yourself as the unique
(01:35):
person you are and how your metabolism works. Now, there's
interesting things around the science around fasting and when we're
in the fed state, it really promotes cellular growth, where
when we're in a fastest state, it stimulates cellular breakdown
and repair. So it has a really beautiful way of
helping repair the body when we are in a fasted state. However,
(01:56):
when we're in fasted state and we're not thriving in it,
it can also have that downside of like losing lean
muscle mass, which is actually going to slow your metallic
down if we're doing too much fasting, which might be
that one meal a day is kind of fasting, and
then you're losing more lean muscle mess, which is actually
overall slowing down your metabolism, also having it and moving
(02:20):
into more like a survival mode sort of metabolism, which
is a slower metabolism, but also has that effect of
reducing mood and also making more irritable or hungry when
you're doing too much fasting, So that negative side really
doesn't work for some people like me personally, I'm one
of those people that it's not a good person to
(02:40):
do fasting, Like if I tried doing one meal a day,
I would just be low energy, grumpy, moody, not a
person you probably want to get to know. But some
people actually just feel great. They've got great brain function,
and that's where the benefit of skipping meals for some
people is it actually helps and create structure to their
day that they know that they can only eat within
(03:01):
a certain window. So if you're not very good at
regulating your appetite, that actually can be really helped. And
also controlling blood sugar levels, so when we're in that
fasted state, it helps us get better instant regulation, which
is going to help us long term have better glucose
control and also greater improvement for cardiovascular as well. So
(03:22):
there's beautiful benefits, but also there's the negative downside, and
I think you've got to weigh it out. And there
was a really interesting study done over a year and
it divided a group of people into calori restrictive eating
of twenty five percent less calories and the other group
doing fasting. And the interesting study results came that actually
they both lost the same amount of weight or similar
(03:44):
no significant difference, but also the same no significant difference
in health outcomes. So that's where I think we've got
to look at it as some people are going to
do better on calor restrictive and other people will do
better on sort of fasting. And the other interesting thing
that came up in some studies is most people do
better if they're doing two or three meals a day
(04:06):
when they're doing their sort of more time restrictive eating,
rather than the one meal a day, and it's a
lot more sustainable. So I think, really looking at the
different options.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
One meal a day's a bit boring though, wasn't it.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Ah, it's hard life one meal a day. But if
you're not very good at regulating your appetite and when
you start eating you can't control what you eat, then
it actually can work for people because they do get
a lot more calorie restrictive by having only that one
big meal a day and not having feeling like they've
got to restrict what they choose to eat. However, they're
(04:38):
downside is they sometimes can eat too much processed food.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
So there's benefits and the downside downsides, But actually it
depends on you and how it affects you individually. Don't
stick with something which is making you miserable or not working.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Yeah, especially if you're not feeling like you're coping and
you can keep up with your everyday life. And I
think maybe start with if you know that you're eating
all over the place, just cut back to being like cool,
I'm going to start with three meals a day through
the day, and then you might go, Okay, I'll try
two a day and see how you feel on that
and whether it makes you thrive or whether it makes
(05:12):
you struggle through the day, how your energy levels are,
what sort of weight loss you're getting if you're trying
to do it for weight loss, And then if you
really need to, you could try the one meal a day,
but it wouldn't be my recommendation. But I know there
are some people that say that they just feel amazing
when they do it too. So I think, look at
your own body as your own unique metabolism and do
(05:33):
what feels right for you.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks It'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News TALKS'DB.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
It is time for Wellness and joining me now is
Erin O'Hara. Good morning, Good morning. So we've been talking
about fasting for quite a while, the or skipping meals.
It's quite a popular strategy for weight loss. But we're
learning a lot more about it, aren't we, and whether
it's what sort of impact it's having on us, and
whether it might be the right thing for someone to do.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Yeah, I think it's been a really trendy thing over
quite a few years now, with intervended fasting or time
restrictive eating, where people are only eating within a certain
time window, maybe fasting for sixteen hours, eating within eight
hours or something like that. And there's so many different
combinations that people do around restrictive eating, and it's a
(00:54):
really interesting one because for some people it actually does work,
and for other people it's just a disaster. Is that
they fast and then they eat, and then when they eat,
they realize, oh my god, I'm so hungry. That they
eat everything the sun and all the wrong stuff, and
actually it doesn't help them in the long term as well.
And also my other big hesitation around it is it
(01:14):
creates that sort of yogo dieting kind of doing it
and then oh the wheels of the way I can
fall off eat anything and actually doesn't really create weight
loss and improve your health when you can't really stick
to it. And that's why I think there's sort of
no one right way to do it for everyone. And
actually you've got to look at yourself as the unique
(01:35):
person you are and how your metabolism works. Now, there's
interesting things around the science around fasting and when we're
in the fed state, it really promotes cellular growth, where
when we're in a fastest state, it stimulates cellular breakdown
and repair. So it has a really beautiful way of
helping repair the body when we are in a fasted state. However,
(01:56):
when we're in fasted state and we're not thriving in it,
it can also have that downside of like losing lean
muscle mass, which is actually going to slow your metallic
down if we're doing too much fasting, which might be
that one meal a day is kind of fasting, and
then you're losing more lean muscle mess, which is actually
overall slowing down your metabolism, also having it and moving
(02:20):
into more like a survival mode sort of metabolism, which
is a slower metabolism, but also has that effect of
reducing mood and also making more irritable or hungry when
you're doing too much fasting, So that negative side really
doesn't work for some people like me personally, I'm one
of those people that it's not a good person to
(02:40):
do fasting, Like if I tried doing one meal a day,
I would just be low energy, grumpy, moody, not a
person you probably want to get to know. But some
people actually just feel great. They've got great brain function,
and that's where the benefit of skipping meals for some
people is it actually helps and create structure to their
day that they know that they can only eat within
(03:01):
a certain window. So if you're not very good at
regulating your appetite, that actually can be really helped. And
also controlling blood sugar levels, so when we're in that
fasted state, it helps us get better instant regulation, which
is going to help us long term have better glucose
control and also greater improvement for cardiovascular as well. So
(03:22):
there's beautiful benefits, but also there's the negative downside, and
I think you've got to weigh it out. And there
was a really interesting study done over a year and
it divided a group of people into calori restrictive eating
of twenty five percent less calories and the other group
doing fasting. And the interesting study results came that actually
they both lost the same amount of weight or similar
(03:44):
no significant difference, but also the same no significant difference
in health outcomes. So that's where I think we've got
to look at it as some people are going to
do better on calor restrictive and other people will do
better on sort of fasting. And the other interesting thing
that came up in some studies is most people do
better if they're doing two or three meals a day
(04:06):
when they're doing their sort of more time restrictive eating,
rather than the one meal a day, and it's a
lot more sustainable. So I think, really looking at the
different options.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
One meal a day's a bit boring though, wasn't it.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Ah, it's hard life one meal a day. But if
you're not very good at regulating your appetite and when
you start eating you can't control what you eat, then
it actually can work for people because they do get
a lot more calorie restrictive by having only that one
big meal a day and not having feeling like they've
got to restrict what they choose to eat. However, they're
(04:38):
downside is they sometimes can eat too much processed food.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
So there's benefits and the downside downsides, But actually it
depends on you and how it affects you individually. Don't
stick with something which is making you miserable or not working.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Yeah, especially if you're not feeling like you're coping and
you can keep up with your everyday life. And I
think maybe start with if you know that you're eating
all over the place, just cut back to being like cool,
I'm going to start with three meals a day through
the day, and then you might go, Okay, I'll try
two a day and see how you feel on that
and whether it makes you thrive or whether it makes
(05:12):
you struggle through the day, how your energy levels are,
what sort of weight loss you're getting if you're trying
to do it for weight loss, And then if you
really need to, you could try the one meal a day,
but it wouldn't be my recommendation. But I know there
are some people that say that they just feel amazing
when they do it too. So I think, look at
your own body as your own unique metabolism and do
(05:33):
what feels right for you.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks It'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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